


Starts

by Maayacola



Category: Big Bang (Band)
Genre: Alcohol, M/M, Obsessive Behaviour, Possessive Behavior, Writing on Skin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-07
Updated: 2012-12-07
Packaged: 2017-11-20 13:42:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/585980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maayacola/pseuds/Maayacola
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And yeah, it definitely starts when Lee Seunghyun is sixteen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Starts

It starts on a Tuesday morning in September when Seungri wakes up twenty minutes past his alarm, in his own flat, with a headache and a tingling left arm, Jiyong’s head heavy on top of it, his face smooth and peaceful in sleep. Seungri has to pee, but he doesn’t want to wake Jiyong, because rousing Jiyong is a terrible task that Seungri doesn’t wish on anyone, let alone himself.

Seungri turns to really look at Jiyong, his mouth relaxed and slightly turned down at the corners, lips dry and cheeks round, and suddenly, it hurts.

Seungri blinks, and tries to clear the haze of sleep out of his eyes, and when he’s done, Jiyong hasn’t moved. He’s facing Seungri, a few wisps of his hair falling across his forehead, the rest an incomprehensible mess on top of his head, and his eyelashes are dark as soot against his skin. Seungri follows Jiyong’s quiet, barely discernable breaths, and it hurts.

It doesn’t hurt like getting punched in the stomach, or like dancing on a possibly broken ankle. It’s not a physical ache at all. It’s more like dreaming of flying, and then waking up underground, with not even a glimpse of the sky and no idea in which direction you might find it. It hurts like that, the kind of hurt born of despair, and Seungri is left winded at how fast the pain hits him, right in the heart.

Jiyong, he thinks, as he takes his right hand and brushes the bangs away from in front of Jiyong’s eyes, is so beautiful. In sleep, Seungri can’t see the way his eyes light up at a challenge, or the teasing glint they take on when Jiyong is playful, or the myriad of expressions Jiyong can make with just the slightest curve of his lips. Seungri can’t hear the way his voice caresses each carefully chosen word, some of them intended to wound and others intended to heal. But Seungri knows the ins and outs of Jiyong so well by now that he can imagine those things all at once, and it hurts.

And maybe it _actually_ starts when Seungri is sixteen, when Jiyong teaches Seungri, for the first time, how to feel like nothing, and then turns around and teaches him, in the same breath, how to pretend like he’s everything.

Maybe it started back then, and it’s only now, on a Tuesday morning in September, twenty minutes after the alarm and long after he should be getting ready to go to a radio interview, that Seungri notices. Maybe Seungri’s been hurting all along, and the hurt has just been unfurling, stretching out its barbed fingers and leaving tiny punctures in his heart until one day, _today_ , Seungri opens his eyes and realizes he’s bleeding from a thousand tiny little holes and lying in a pool of his own blood.

Maybe it’s been unbearable all along, and Seungri just didn’t realize it; didn’t _want_ to realize it, because his hold on his sanity has been fragile enough, little bits of it slipping through his fingers and leaving him reeling when Jiyong smiles at him and calls him his favorite.

Seungri shifts, and his weighty silver bracelet, the one that Jiyong had given him a while ago, is cold against the skin of his wrist.

“What are you staring at?” Jiyong says, and his lips brush against the skin of Seungri’s bare shoulder, and it tingles, and Seungri suppresses a shiver. “Stop.”

“Yes, hyung,” Seungri whispers back, and Jiyong digs his nails into Seungri’s waist.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Jiyong says, and Seungri swallows, his throat dry and parched. “I’m trying to sleep.”

What Seungri and Jiyong have always had is a friendship that is too close and yet not close enough. What Seungri will have is a broken heart.

“Yes, hyung,” Seungri says again, and Seungri, as he peels himself out of his bed, sheets sticking to him like a second skin, has never really felt so hopeless.

 

*

 

And yeah, it definitely starts when Lee Seunghyun is sixteen.

Kwon Jiyong’s got a strange face, and he doesn’t look anything like a pop idol, but then he opens his mouth and speaks and Lee Seunghyun knows he’s looking at a star.

It’s hero worship, Seungri knows, but it’s different, because Kwon Jiyong is right here, standing next to Lee Seunghyun, close enough to touch. Kwon Jiyong has a way of looking through people, though, so sometimes, Lee Seunghyun thinks it wouldn’t matter if he was here or there or anywhere, because as far as Kwon Jiyong is concerned, he’s but a wayward branch on a tree, destined to be pruned, cut away and tossed aside on the way toward debut.

Kwon Jiyong might be a teenager, just like Lee Seunghyun, but he talks like an artist, moves like an artist, and thinks like an artist. Just like Lee Seunghyun loves to dance, Kwon Jiyong loves to create. Lee Seunghyun can see the notes tripping over each other in Kwon Jiyong’s eyes; he can see them trying to escape out of his ears, his mouth, his never-still fingers, and maybe Kwon Jiyong just _is_ music, but that’s okay, because Lee Seunghyun loves music, too.

Kwon Jiyong doesn’t like distractions, or people who doesn’t think deserve his consideration, or people he doesn’t think will stay, so Kwon Jiyong doesn’t much like Lee Seunghyun at first.

But Lee Seunghyun is fascinated by Kwon Jiyong; he doesn’t know why, because Kwon Jiyong is scary and unpredictable and simmering below the surface, so intense it’s overwhelming. But something about him makes Lee Seunghyun want to steal all his attention. Want to be worth Kwon Jiyong’s time.

Lee Seunghyun wants to be a branch strong enough to support Kwon Jiyong’s weight. A branch strong enough to climb.

And when he finally earns a smile, warm and surprised and mildly intrigued, Lee Seunghyun feels like he’s _won._

Maybe it’s then that Lee Seunghyun becomes Seungri, spelled V-I-C-T-O-R-Y.

 

*

 

“Plans for tonight?” Seunghyun asks, looking more asleep than awake.

“Going out with my girlfriend,” Jiyong says, and Seungri blinks. He hadn’t known Jiyong had found a new girlfriend. Not that it matters, he thinks, because it’s not like Seungri is…

“Didn’t know you had a new girlfriend,” Youngbae says, typing into his phone. Seungri bets he’s updating his twitter with a blessing for the beautiful day, or an ambiguous statement about the joy of life. Seungri hopes it’s not a photo of him, because Seungri looks terrible.

Jiyong shrugs nonchalantly, and Seungri tries to will his heart to stop clenching painfully in his chest. Jiyong isn’t his. He’s just Jiyong’s, same as it’s always been, and feeling jealous won’t make things any easier.

Knowing there’s a girlfriend again just feels a little worse now, after this morning’s revelation, that’s all. Nothing to worry about.

“And you, maknae?” Seunghyun asks.

“Why?” Seungri jokes. “Need an introduction?”

“I’m bored,” Seunghyun says. “Let’s go out.”

“We’ll see,” Seungri says, and Daesung leans closer. He opens his mouth to say something, but Jiyong slides between them, filling Seungri’s vision with his face.

“Maknae, you look so glum,” Jiyong says, pinching at Seungri’s cheek. Seungri laughs because he’s supposed to, and leans away. “It’s only Tuesday and we’ve got two very long days before we leave for New York.”

It’s half-jibe and half-critique. _Get your energy up,_ Jiyong is telling him, so Seungri throws back his shoulders and grins. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Seungri says. “I’m perfectly cheerful for our rehearsal!”

“I dunno, maknae,” Seunghyun says, running a hand through his unstyled hair. “You look a little run down. Didn’t you sleep last night?”

 

> _The scratching of Jiyong’s pen across paper. Jiyong’s voice, humming an experimental melody. Jiyong’s thumbs tapping a beat on his hipbone. The rising sun._

 

“Some,” Seungri says, and Seunghyun raises an eyebrow. “Enough.”

“You should watch less porn. Or get a girlfriend.”

“I have twenty girlfriends,” Seungri jokes around the lump in his throat. “It’s just not the same as hot blonde lesbians.”

Youngbae shakes his head. “That’s our maknae,” he says, and Daesung laughs, and Jiyong just watches him with eyes so hot they burn.

“We should rehearse,” Jiyong says, and Daesung nods and gets up, followed closely by Seunghyun. Seungri is the last to stand, rising only when Youngbae offers him a hand.

“You sure you’re okay?” Youngbae asks, and Seungri blinks.

“Yeah,” Seungri says. “Of course I am.”

“I don’t know,” Youngbae says. “You just seem a bit out of it.”

“I’m just tired,” Seungri says, clapping his hand reassuringly on Youngbae’s shoulder. “I probably should sleep more. Listen to my hyungs for once.”

Youngbae looks at him, considering him for a moment. “If you say so.” He tilts his head to the side, and then reaches up and pulls his cap lower. “You just…”

“What?” Seungri averts his eyes, letting them rest on their band mates, who’ve already begun stretching. Jiyong has his hands on Seunghyun’s shoulders, pushing him forward, and Daesung has his wrists and pulls as Jiyong pushes. Seunghyun is making fake sounds of pain that are less convincing between low chuckles, and Jiyong has a devious smile on his face.

Seungri’s heart drops, and maybe looking at Youngbae might have been safer after all.

“You look like you woke up today and the world was upside down.”

“It was,” Seungri says, licking his lips. “I opened my eyes today and nothing was the same as when I’d closed them.” He turns back to Youngbae, who is staring at him curiously. “I’m just kidding.” Seungri smiles hugely at Youngbae. “Don’t worry so much.”

“Lately,” Youngbae says, “I worry more.”

“No one ever needs to worry about me,” Seungri says. “I’m strong. It would take a lot to faze me, considering the size of my ego.”

“I suppose that’s true.” Youngbae pulls off his zipper sweatshirt. “Let’s get over there, maknae, before Jiyong yells at us.”

And yes, Jiyong is looking at them now, because they’ve lingered too long talking, and his eyes feel heavy on the back of Seungri’s neck as he takes a sip of his water. “Yeah, let’s.”

“But seriously,” Youngbae says, as he stands next to Seungri, stretching his hamstrings by reaching his hands in the direction of his toes. “If you ever want to talk…”

“Yeah,” Seungri says. “Thanks.”

Jiyong is staring, but Seungri doesn’t look up, because he’s terrified that his heart is just sitting there in his eyes and he doesn’t want Jiyong to see it. His bracelet feels more like a manacle than a gift.

 

*

 

There are other starts.

Other beginnings.

Seungri looks for Jiyong in his room one night, after a late rehearsal. Seungri is fresh from the shower, and his skin is slick with moisture and steam.

Jiyong is still sweaty from rehearsal, and has his hands buried in his hair, with mouth pursed and eyes narrowed.

“Is everything alright, hyung?” Seungri asks, standing carefully in the door. Sometimes it’s okay if Seungri interrupts, but other times it isn’t-- Seungri’s known Jiyong around nine months now, and something he’s learned is that Jiyong is temperamental and unpredictable.

Jiyong can go from childish and playful, shoving napkins in Seungri’s shoulders to make them look stronger in a photo-shoot, and laughing at the way Seunghyun’s hair looks when he takes off his cap, to snapping at anyone who moves one centimeter out of line (and those who don’t, too.) You never know which Jiyong you’ll get, and Seungri’s gotten the latter enough times to be wary.

_“He’s basically the Van Gogh of pop music,”_ Sean had said once, looking at Seungri kindly; sympathetically. _“Being so into what you do can make you a little crazy.”_

So Seungri tiptoes and hesitates and always knocks softly, opening the door cautiously only if Jiyong doesn’t tell him to go away.

“I can’t write,” Jiyong says. “I can’t write anything.”

“Why not?” Seungri asks, gingerly perching on the edge of Jiyong’s bed, about a foot from where Jiyong lies on his stomach, notebook in front of him. From here, he can see the dark circles under Jiyong’s eyes, and the way he gnaws on his lower lip, eyes staring at a blank piece of paper.

“I don’t know,” Jiyong says. “If I knew, I’d fix it.” He collapses dramatically down, face burrowing in the comforter, hair twisting in every direction thanks to his frustrated hands.

“Right,” Seungri says, and he reaches his hand out, letting it hover for a moment over the back of Jiyong’s neck, before hesitantly resting his palm against the skin.

Jiyong tenses, his spine straightening, but he doesn’t push Seungri’s hand away. Instead, he sort of… moves into it, like he’s inviting Seungri’s touch. Seungri complies with Jiyong’s unspoken command, sliding his hand down Jiyong’s back slowly, the ribbed material of Jiyong’s tank shirt as rough beneath his fingers as Jiyong’s skin is smooth.

When Jiyong doesn’t make a move to stop him, Seungri gets adventurous, letting his hand slip down Jiyong’s sides, feeling Jiyong’s ribs beneath his fingers, counting them silently as Jiyong sighs and relaxes.

“Do you want me to stop?” Seungri asks, because he and Jiyong aren’t this close- they haven’t been, anyway, before now. Even when Jiyong slips an arm across Seungri’s shoulders, Seungri finds a way to wriggle away, because there’s something about Jiyong that makes Seungri feel like he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. Something that makes Seungri nervous.

And Seungri doesn’t touch Jiyong much, either. Seungri has always thought that for as much as Jiyong likes to touch, Jiyong doesn’t like to _be_ touched, because when he’s being touched, he’s not in control. But Jiyong curls and presses up under his hand like a cat, simultaneously standoffish and demanding, and Seungri swallows around the tightness in his throat, and drags his nails gently down Jiyong’s spine.

“No,” Jiyong says, and his voice is husky, and it makes Seungri shiver at the sound of it. “Don’t.”

So Seungri doesn’t. He explores the planes of Jiyong’s back with fingers that grow more and more sure, and suddenly Jiyong is propped up on his elbows again, scribbling furiously in his notebook as Seungri touches.

“Yes,” Jiyong says, blowing his bangs out of his face, revealing thick eyebrows and a tiny zit at his temple that Seungri hadn’t noticed earlier.

Later, when Seungri’s hand stills, his arm tired, Jiyong doesn’t seem to notice. Seungri pulls his knees up to his chin, wrapping both arms around his legs. He watches Jiyong write, and for some reason Jiyong’s passion, which has always impressed him, seems captivating, like there can be nothing more amazing than Jiyong as he creates. What he’s scribbling in his notebook right now could be a future single, Seungri realizes, or a solo for Daesung, or anything. Maybe it’ll be nothing that gets used, after all, but either way, it’s a little piece of Jiyong’s soul. Everything Jiyong writes is.

“You’re still here,” Jiyong says later, jarring Seungri out of his dozing state, and Seungri looks at the other boy through his lashes.

“Yes,” Seungri says, and his voice is thick with sleep. “Sorry.”

“No,” Jiyong says, and he’s giving Seungri this intense look that Seungri doesn’t understand. It makes his nerves feel on edge, though, because in a way, Jiyong’s gaze is peeling back his flesh to see what is underneath. Seungri shifts, letting his feet fall to the floor, and then stands. “No, it was…” Jiyong studies him, leaving the sentence unfinished.

Then Jiyong reaches out and takes Seungri’s hand between both his hands, examining it carefully. The scrutiny makes Seungri hold his breath, lower lip caught between his teeth. Jiyong’s hands are so warm and thin and strong.

He has the hands of an artist.

“Why…” Jiyong starts to say, and then he’s looking up at Seungri again, eyes flickering to his once-empty notebook that is now filled with words. “You…”

“Goodnight,” Seungri says, pulling his hand free and retreating to the door. “See you in the morning, hyung.”

“Yes,” Jiyong says, and even when Seungri’s closed the door and climbed into his own bed, hiding under the covers and hoping they muffle the sound of his heartbeat, he can still feel the way Jiyong’s hands had cradled his own.

 

*

 

The way Seungri feels about Jiyong is something he’s never been able to sum up in words.

Seungri writes songs, but he is not Jiyong, who teases words into perfect positions to do his bidding, spilling out stories that ensnare and enrapture.

Seungri is good with punch-lines not processes, and so when he tries to put together an exhaustive list of all the moments that have added up into this irrepressible feeling of being completely and totally in love, and make that into something he can explain, he has no idea what to say, not even to himself.

There is only the way that he knows, instinctively, when Jiyong is in the room. The way the air seems to seethe with vitality and crackling emotion and all these things that make it hard for Seungri to think. Make it hard for Seungri to do anything.

There’s the way that he lets Jiyong break him into pieces, over and over again, even when it hurts so much he doesn’t want to open his eyes.

Seungri, when he’d first seen Jiyong, when he first came into contact with the charisma that is G-Dragon, knew he was in trouble by the way he wanted to move closer, a moth to a flame.

Jiyong knows the power he has over Seungri, and maybe that’s the worst part. He knows, just as much as Seungri knows. They both know, and Jiyong presses closer anyway, taking from Seungri. Seungri can’t stop giving, either, because he’s addicted to Jiyong just as much as Jiyong is addicted to him.

And maybe, if Seungri had to describe the way Jiyong makes him feel, he’d say it’s like Jiyong, in his intensity, is burning Seungri alive.

 

*

 

“You’re avoiding me,” Jiyong says, and Seungri winces, running a hand through his too-short hair, and turning slowly to look at Jiyong, who is squatting next to him in the foyer of the rehearsal room, pink hat pulled low over sweaty hair. The hat’s embroidered eyes are staring at him just as steadily as Jiyong’s.

“No, I’m not,” Seungri says, and he continues lacing up his shoes. “I’m going home to sleep. Didn’t you complain today that my moves were too slow and sloppy?”

“We don’t live together anymore,” Jiyong says, and it’s a half-truth, because Jiyong’s got six pairs of jeans in Seungri’s closet and wears Seungri’s hats when he can’t decide what to do with his hair in the morning, because he’s woken up too late in Seungri’s bed, their bodies stuck together with sweat and heat.

“That’s because you moved out of our dorm,” Seungri says lightly, like it hadn’t been terrible at the time.

 

> _”I need my own space,” Jiyong says. “Because I can’t breathe anymore. Something about you is crushing me. Something about me is crushing you.”_

 

“You know why I moved out,” Jiyong says, and he doesn’t reach out and slide his hand down Seungri’s neck, like he does when they’re alone, because Seunghyun is watching them like a hawk, and they’re getting too old for that not to raise an eyebrow.

“Yeah,” Seungri says. “I do.”

He doesn’t.

What Seungri does know is that he wants to go home and crawl under his heaviest winter quilt and hide there in the darkness, and pretend like his sheets don’t smell like Jiyong.

Seungri swallows his feelings and grins at Jiyong. “I just don’t feel like going out to dinner. I just kind of… want to be by myself.”

“No you don’t,” Jiyong says. “You’re avoiding me. You’ve been acting weird since yesterday.”

Seungri cuts his eyes past Jiyong, to see if anyone can hear. No one is paying them much attention. Youngbae darts the occasional worried glance in their direction, but he and Daesung and Seunghyun are still reviewing a section of the choreography. Seunghyun always forgets the old songs. Normally it’s Seungri’s job, but Seungri is tired. He just wants to go home and sleep. He wants to stop looking at Jiyong.

“You’re imagining things, hyung,” Seungri says. “After all, how can I avoid you when we’re all together at least ten hours a day?” Jiyong and Seungri are together far more than that.

Jiyong scoots closer, so that he and Seungri are pressed together, side to side. Seungri can feel Jiyong’s quickened heartbeat, probably from rehearsal. Jiyong leans so that his head rests on Seungri’s shoulder. “I adore you, maknae,” Jiyong says sweetly.

Jiyong is focusing in on him, which always weakens Seungri’s guard. Jiyong knows that, and pushes his advantage with a hand on Seungri’s thigh. Seungri closes his eyes, and that feeling, the one that found him defenseless yesterday as he watched the play of early morning light on Jiyong’s skin, finds him again. It’s just as unsettling as it was then, and Seungri is sick with it.

“Me too, hyung,” Seungri says. “You know I like you best.”

“Good,” Jiyong says. “Come out with us?” Seungri ties a bow in his shoelaces with shaky hands. He’s so tired, but he’s not going to say no. There’s a glimmer of triumph in Jiyong’s eyes, because he knows Seungri won’t, _can’t_ , say no.

“I thought you were going home?” Daesung asks, as they make their way out of the rehearsal room, all together save for Seunghyun, who’d left with a smirk and an _“I’ve got more important things to do,”_ as Youngbae teased that he’d _“get a gold medal someday.”_

“Ah, hyung convinced me it would be more fun if we all went out together,” Seungri says, and he shoves his hands in his pockets as he laughs. It’s not a very good laugh, but it will do. “So I’ll sleep afterwards.”

“Ah, you really are too easy for Jiyong,” Youngbae says. “If he told you to walk off a cliff, would you do it?”

_Yes._ “Don’t be ridiculous,” Seungri says, and Jiyong laughs and jumps up on Seungri’s back. Seungri’s hands quickly go to catch the underside of Jiyong’s thighs so he can more easily bear his weight.

“It’s because maknae loves me,” Jiyong says, and Daesung shakes his head chidingly. Youngbae slides Seungri another worried glance, but then he smiles. “Should we eat grilled meat?”

“Yeah!” Daesung pumps his fist in the air. “One day we’re going to get TOP-hyung to come with us.”

“One day,” Seungri agrees. “Hey, should I call up some friends to meet us?”

“No, no,” Jiyong says. “Just us is fine.” Seungri can feel Jiyong’s lips brush his ear.

“Okay,” Seungri says, and he thinks he manages to keep his voice from shaking.

“As long as Seungri comes, it’s fine,” Jiyong whispers, and Seungri can never say no.

 

*

 

Jiyong can’t help but play games.

Every word is a test, and every action carefully calculated to bring people closer and trap them there, like Jiyong is a black widow spider and everyone he meets is sustenance for his creativity.

Seungri can’t help but fall for Jiyong’s ploys, tugged into Jiyong’s games. Jiyong is so good at them that it feels like he’s the only player.

Jiyong’s hand around his bicep is too tight, and Jiyong’s mouth, set in a straight line, is too damning, but Seungri can’t seem to pull away long enough to find air.

The problem is, he’s not sure he wants to.

Seungri knows Jiyong might break him beyond repair. Maybe he already has, and Seungri is just dragging his pieces along behind him, trying not to misplace any of them.

In the end, it’s a risk he’s willing to take.

Seungri wants to be a branch that won’t break off. Seungri wants to survive the winter, and bloom come spring.

 

*

 

Another start.

Jiyong comes into Seungri’s room late in the night. Seungri is awake, because he’s been nervously reviewing choreography in his head, and he can’t seem to make his brain shut off. He’s confused for a moment, until he feels Jiyong slide under his covers and curl up around him.

“Hyung?” he mumbles, confused, but Jiyong just sighs, and Seungri can feel the exhalation on his shoulder. Jiyong slides an arm around Seungri’s waist and pulls him closer.

“Just go to sleep,” Jiyong says, and there’s nothing sweet in his voice; just a gruff command that somehow works, and Seungri can feel himself drifting off as Jiyong’s hands rub patterns into his stomach. Jiyong’s arm is warm against the bare skin of Seungri’s torso, and the way he breathes, deeply and loudly, is almost hypnotic. Seungri doesn’t feel homesick for Gwangju right now, when everything is Jiyong.

Seungri wants to ask Jiyong what he’s doing, and why he’s here in Seungri’s bed, but he’s tumbling down into somnolence, and it’s not like he would ever tell Jiyong to leave, so it doesn’t really seem to matter.

“Why _you_?” Jiyong says quietly, and the bewilderment in Jiyong’s voice is the last thing he recognizes as he falls to sleep.

When he wakes up, Jiyong is still sitting next to him, surrounded by torn-out pages of his notebook and a feverish gleam in his eyes. “What?”

“You make me want to write,” Jiyong says, and Seungri’s stomach churns. “Able to write.”

“I do?” Seungri asks, and he sounds like a child, but Jiyong looks up at him and gives Seungri a strong, clear smile, despite the red lines like a spider’s web in the whites of his eyes. “You should have slept.”

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” Jiyong says. “But right now I’m so alive.”

He’s thrumming with some kind of frenetic energy. His thigh is pressed against Seungri’s and Seungri can feel the heat of Jiyong down to his bones, and he thinks that there are worse things than being Kwon Jiyong’s inspiration, because Seungri hasn’t slept this well in months.

 

*

 

_“Most importantly, I get my inspiration from people. There are people who spark creativity within me. As long as these people are around me, it’s like my thoughts are stimulated. I love getting my inspiration like that. It’s fascinating.”_ \-- G-Dragon, Space Shower TV, March, 2012

 

*

 

It’s Daesung’s number that pops up on Seungri’s phone as he’s getting out of the shower.

_Go to sleep!!_ the text says, and Seungri smiles even as he sets the phone back on the sink-counter so he can dry himself off. Daesung and Youngbae both have such nurturing personalities that Seungri is used to getting messages like that; he appreciates them, and the thought behind them.

He texts Daesung back quickly ( _Going to bed right now!_ ) before he wraps the towel around his waist and steps out of the steamy room.

The hall is cool against his wet skin, and Seungri shivers and hustles in a hurry to his room, leaving wet footprints on the wooden floor in his wake.

Jiyong is sitting on his bed. He’s wearing an oversized sweater that bares his collarbone, and Seungri can see the edge of his Dragonball tattoo peaking out.

 

> _”Eight stars?” Seungri asked, running his fingertip along the outer edge of the tattoo. “I thought there were only seven Dragonballs.”_
> 
> _“Some things in life are unattainable,” Jiyong had said, and Seungri had looked up from the tattoo and into Jiyong’s eyes._
> 
> _“Like you?” Seungri had asked, and Jiyong hadn’t answered._

 

“I wasn’t expecting you,” Seungri says, and Jiyong’s not looking at Seungri’s face. Seungri flushes as Jiyong’s eyes track a droplet of water down his chest to where it disappears beneath his towel. It shouldn’t be embarrassing. It shouldn’t make Seungri feel empty.

“We’re leaving tomorrow,” Jiyong says, like that hasn’t been the only thing their managers have wanted to talk about for the past two weeks. Seungri knew even earlier, because Seungri is like that. He just has to know, otherwise things get mixed up in his head.

“Whose nickname is ‘little manager’?” Seungri jokes, as he turns to his dresser, searching for a clean pair of underwear. “It’s not yours.”

“I have a different job,” Jiyong says, suddenly behind Seungri, sweater sticking to Seungri’s wet back. “I’m ‘leader’.”

“I know,” Seungri says, moving forward to create space between them, swallowing and licking his lips. He grabs a pair of briefs and Jiyong laughs.

“You can’t avoid me, maknae. I won’t let you,” Jiyong says, and Seungri knows that, too.

“Shouldn’t you spend your last night with your _girlfriend_?” Seungri asks, as Jiyong skims his fingers along Seungri’s waist. Jiyong seems to hear the bitter edge to Seungri’s voice that he tries to rein in, and his eyes glimmer with curiosity, before it’s overshadowed with something a little more familiar.

“She doesn’t inspire me,” Jiyong says, and Seungri spins in Jiyong’s grasp. “I need…” Jiyong’s got a melody in his fingertips, and he’s tapping it out along Seungri’s skin. Jiyong is alive with song.

Seungri never says no.

 

*

 

Other starts are less monumental.

Seungri has gotten used to Jiyong appearing in his bed in the middle of the night. It’s different from the daytime, where Jiyong has taken to climbing all over Seungri, petting him and adoring him, in front of everyone and when they’re alone, too. It’s _so_ different, because when Jiyong comes to him like this, it’s because he’s stuck, and the way he touches Seungri, sliding a smooth palm up Seungri’s leg or demanding huffily that Seungri rub his shoulders as he writes… it’s not as calculated as everything else Jiyong does. It’s just Jiyong in the raw, searching for words and coming to Seungri to find them.

Seungri lets him touch. Seungri likes that Jiyong, in some capacity, needs _him_. Seungri likes being a part of Jiyong’s music, because Jiyong doesn’t care about anything in this world more than he cares about music, the pages of his notebook becoming blood, sweat and pure emotion as Jiyong covers them in his secrets.

Seungri knows he’s not Jiyong’s only muse. Jiyong falls heavy and hard into love, tumbling head over heels for girls he meets once or twice and sweeping them off their feet. Seungri knows the signs; the flush of excitement, and the way Jiyong will change his clothes two or three times to find the right ones. It’s like clockwork, Seungri thinks, because Jiyong loves to be in love. But then the chime sounds midnight, and the carriage reverts to a pumpkin, and Jiyong falls out of love as quickly as he falls in, and then he writes.

But there are the times between heartbreak and new romance. There are those moments, and Jiyong comes up empty, and that’s when he slides slick and cool into Seungri’s shadow, pushing closer and closer until he’s crawling under Seungri’s skin, and Seungri grows accustomed to it far too easily. It’s okay, because Seungri doesn’t expect anything from Jiyong. He might be the only person Jiyong knows that doesn’t, and maybe that’s why Jiyong keeps coming back.

Seungri is Jiyong’s only constant muse, it seems, but Jiyong doesn’t treat Seungri like he treats his girlfriends. Jiyong shows Seungri all of his rough edges, every single one of them dangerous and sharp; the ones he hides when he’s in the throes of infatuation.

Seungri thinks it’s because Jiyong has never been infatuated with Seungri.

It’s Seungri who has always been infatuated with Kwon Jiyong.

It’s always been Seungri who has waited, and wanted Jiyong to see him. There had been something in the way Jiyong had looked at him, at first, that had made Seungri feel like nothing. Like he could see straight through Seungri’s clumsy and hastily built defenses, and what he found there behind all the bravado and wide smiles didn’t impress him at all. It had made Seungri feel naked, and he hated it. It also lit a fire, because he wanted; still wants, if he’s honest with himself, for Jiyong to look inside of him and see something worth keeping. He wants Jiyong’s piercing gaze to linger on him a bit longer, to go a little soft like it does when he looks at Daesung. Like when he used to look at Hyunseung.

Now, Seungri thinks, whatever this is between them, this thing he doesn’t understand that keeps bringing Jiyong back to him, it has made Jiyong look at him, and so Seungri accepts it, because… He likes the way Jiyong’s slender hands wander across the skin of his arm, or the way Jiyong gets too close, invading his personal space and making Seungri oscillate between uncomfortable and pleased. He likes it, because Jiyong _sees_ him.

Seungri doesn’t know why, but it’s something that he strangely cherishes.

 

*

 

_”I get my inspiration by encountering love… I don’t know a lot about love, but I’m learning all the time.”_ \- G-dragon

 

*

 

Jiyong breathes music.

Sometimes, Seungri wonders what it must be like, in Jiyong’s head, where verses and melodies comingle with raw emotion. Sometimes he wonders, if he were to dive inside of Jiyong’s thoughts, what treasures he would find; what pearls of poetry lurk beneath those raging waters.

Sometimes, though, when Jiyong looks up at Seungri, eyes flashing and fingers tapping to a mindless beat, mind anywhere but here, in the present, Seungri knows he’d drown in there, screaming and clawing for the surface as the black waters pulled him down.

 

*

 

“You’re a genius,” Seungri says, and Jiyong laughs, loudly.

“No, I’m insane,” Jiyong corrects. “Absolutely and completely insane.”

“A lot of geniuses are misunderstood,” Seungri says. “People make assumptions about what’s normal and what’s not, and that’s why they try to attach labels like insane to-“

“No, maknae,” Jiyong says, and he nuzzles his nose into Seungri’s cheek. “I’m actually crazy.” His little huffs of breath tickle Seungri’s ear. “No one will ever understand me.”

“I’ll do my best to not misunderstand you, at least,” Seungri says, and he starts to try.

 

*

 

“Are you excited to head back to New York?” Youngbae asks, eyes like half-moons as he smiles at Seungri. “Concerts! More concerts!” He adjusts his cap, `Fantastic Baby` disappearing as he pulls the brim lower.

Seungri leans forward in his airplane seat, safety-belt digging into his belly as he tries to get closer to Youngbae, who sits diagonally in front of him, next to his manager.

“Only if it’s not as cold as last time,” Seungri says, and Jiyong shifts beside him. “I thought my balls were going to freeze off.”

“Sure they didn’t?” Seunghyun asks, peeking his head around from the row in front of Seungri to look at teasingly at him. “You’ve been hitting some really high notes, lately, and I was just wondering-“

Youngbae laughs into his palm, and Seunghyun, satisfied, disappears back into his seat again, and Seungri scowls. “You know I’ve been working on it,” he mumbles, and Youngbae smiles at him soothingly.

“I know _I’m_ excited,” Youngbae says. “I love New York. So many interesting looking people. Such a cool vibe.”

Youngbae sort of dances in his seat as he talks, the way he always does. Seungri almost admires Youngbae’s energy- it seems boundless, at times. The opposite of the man next to him, curled up in weary slumber. Seungri leans back and Jiyong falls into him.

Jiyong just looks tired. He’d stayed up writing lyrics, after… Seungri had opened his eyes with the rising of the sun, and Jiyong had never closed his. “Yeah, it’s really cool,” Seungri says, and wonders if he sounds as unenthusiastic as he feels. He must, because Youngbae’s eyebrows climb his forehead, disappearing beneath his ball-cap.

“You don’t like New York?”

“I like New York just fine,” Seungri says, and shifts so that Jiyong’s head can rest more easily on his shoulder. “I’m just…”

“You’ve been strange, this week.” It’s not the first time he’s mentioned it, but he seems more sure this time.

“Yeah,” Seungri admits. “I’ve… had an epiphany.” Jiyong fits against him with the ease of knowing every line of Seungri’s body. “I’m just exhausted.”

“Physically or emotionally?” Youngbae queries, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully.

Jiyong smells like flowers, today. It’s Seungri’s shampoo. Jiyong had sent a text to his girlfriend as Seungri had brushed his teeth, and Seungri had let the water run to cover the sound of Jiyong laughing at her reply. He’d felt better when his mouth tasted of mint instead of heartache. Cleaner. Less pathetic.

Seungri hates himself. Just a little.

“Emotionally,” Seungri admits, and he doesn’t look at Jiyong, whom he knows is awake. He keeps his eyes firmly in the direction of nothing instead, letting the grey and blue of the airplane seat in front of him fill his vision with neutral color as he lets his eyes lose focus.

Seungri feels like his insides are all one big open wound, because Seungri is not like Jiyong. Seungri doesn’t fall in love every day. Seungri’s never been in love at all, before. If it feels like this, hopeless and terrible like it’s tearing a chasm through his chest that everyone can see, he’s not sure he ever wants to do it again.

“We’ll go out dancing,” Youngbae says, and Seungri smiles at him, forcing his mouth into the well-practiced shape. “Meet American girls at a club, or something. Cheer you up.”

“I don’t speak English.” Seungri keeps smiling anyway, weakly, and it’s enough for Youngbae.

“I do,” Youngbae says, and sits back, satisfied, in his seat. “Try and get some sleep with Leader.”

Leader is the reason Seungri can’t sleep. Seungri does close his eyes, though, and behind his eyelids, he imagines his punctured heart, with its thousands of holes, bleeding out more and more with every beat.

Jiyong slips his fingers between Seungri’s, like he always does, and Seungri wants to cry, because he’s so in love that he’s lost in it.

 

*

 

Seungri remembers when his confidence was real, and not a mask he put on to cover up how much he’s been broken down. He can remember being fifteen and on top of the world. His dance group had over 3000 fans in their fan café, and he performed on a regular basis in front of people easily impressed with the things he could do to his body, just moving to the rhythm of music that made him want to express it all. Seungri’d thought that was the big-time.

He had been so proud, and so sure. Seungri had stood at the foot of a mountain and had eyes only for the summit.

YG Entertainment is simultaneously one of the best things and one of the worst things to ever happen to Lee Seunghyun. One of the best, because Yang Hyun Suk had created Seungri; he had built an idol from a boy who loved to dance for the sake of dancing. He’d made a man who entertained millions with a brash laugh and dark under-eye circles that charmed those just waiting to be charmed. One of the worst because Seungri, as strong as he is outside, feels so weak inside sometimes that he worries his mask will crack, and reveal just how ruined he’s become.

Seungri often thinks he’s too young to be this jaded, but then he realizes he’s too old to pretend, when he’s alone with his insecurities and his thoughts and the remaining bits of his dreams, that he’s not.

Jiyong says, sometimes, that Youngbae is like a tree; strong and rooted down into the earth, certain in who he is and what he wants to be to others.

Seungri is more like a wayward branch, waiting for a windstorm to knock him loose from a tree that might never have needed him in the first place.

 

*

 

_“During my path and dream of becoming a singer, I was tormented by extreme inferiority. The chance might roll away if my talent wasn’t on par. I felt uneasy all the time. When I wanted to give up half way, I reminded myself to be strong. Besides telling myself to stay strong, there was nothing more I could do.”_ \- Seungri

 

*

 

It’s flattering, when Jiyong pays attention. When Jiyong wants to spend time with him, laugh with him, drag him around by their linked hands.

Always together.

Nyongtori.

Cute.

It’s flattering, and it’s the side Seungri finds the most dangerous, because he buys into that calculated affection like it’s real, even though he knows he shouldn’t.

No one knows what Jiyong really feels, except when he sings. And the things he sings about are terrifying and deep; things Seungri’s never considered or thought about before.

So Seungri should stop thinking that Jiyong likes him, because he has no idea if Jiyong does or not. And Seungri’s only eighteen and Jiyong’s only twenty, but it feels like years and years between them because Seungri can never seem to catch up. Jiyong keeps holding out his hand though, and Seungri keeps taking it, and it hurts more and more each time Jiyong lets go.

 

*

 

New York is much different than how they left it. This time, the trees still have leaves; gold and brown and yellow and red, which Seungri knows are the universal symbol for the full onset of fall. The air is brisk and cool, but not cold, and Seungri doesn’t feel ill-prepared for the weather in his leather jacket.

Jiyong looks cold though, in his pants with cropped ankles that he’ll insist on wearing up until December. He looks paler than usual, Seungri notes, before he forces himself to stop paying so much attention.

“Ah, my back!” Seungri says, stretching his hands above his head in a giant, bear-like stretch, like he’s just emerged from hibernation. “Long plane ride.”

“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” Seunghyun says, pushing his sunglasses up to cover his no-doubt bloodshot eyes. Seungri, in between naps and peeks at his magazines, had noticed Seunghyun pouring over a script. Seungri had heard, from the other managers, that TOP had been cast in a new drama. Seungri doesn’t know when he’ll have time to film it, but Seunghyun seems to be preparing for it now. By January, Seungri thinks, the tour will be over, and they’ll have a little space. Who knows how long it will last, but they’ll have a little space.

“I was just trying to foster discussion,” Seungri says.

“I want to foster a nap in my hotel room bed,” Seunghyun replies. “And I would possibly like to foster a glass of Bacardi and Coke.”

“I slept well,” Daesung says, and he leans against Seunghyun playfully, nudging with an elbow. “Maybe if you weren’t in serious-business-actor-mode the whole flight, you could have gotten a bit of shut-eye.”

“I’m going to make you cry this time, Daesungie,” Seunghyun says with a teasing grin. “This time when you text me, it’ll be _’oh, hyung, I couldn’t stop sobbing, it was just so touching!’_ , instead of that nonsense you sent last time.”

“I _almost_ cried, that time,” Daesung says. “My eyes were wet. War movies always get me a little.”

Youngbae laughs. “I cried, hyung. It was very moving.”

“This is why you’re my best dongsaeng,” Seunghyun says, patting Youngbae on the shoulder, and Youngbae smiles gently, and Seungri momentarily considers putting up a fight for the position until Seunghyun winks at him, and Seungri lets it go. Daesung pouts, as much as he can while wearing a smile that stretches from ear to ear, and Jiyong is silent.

“You gonna make it, Jiyong?” Seungri hears Youngbae say, and suddenly, Youngbae is behind him, walking next to Jiyong but not close enough to touch. Jiyong is prickly like that, and Youngbae knows it. They all know it.

“Just not feeling well,” Jiyong says, and Seungri lingers, falling into step with them as Daesung and Seunghyun get further ahead, bickering about something or other, the air punctuated with Daesung’s laughs and Seunghyun’s quiet snickers.

Sometimes, Seungri thinks that their relationship is the sort of relationship he and Jiyong could have had.

Other times, Seungri is well aware that Jiyong is nothing like Seunghyun, and that he isn’t much like Daesung either. Perhaps, Seungri thinks, they were always meant to be this.

Jiyong leans against him, and Seungri can feel the lines of exhaustion in his wiry body. He exchanges a moderately alarmed look with Youngbae, but then Jiyong straightens, and smiles at them thinly. “Don’t worry,” Jiyong says. “I’m fine.”

“If you say so,” Youngbae says, and Seungri swallows his concern, knowing Jiyong will just resent it, like he resents anything that implies he’s not one hundred percent autonomous. “We have a show tomorrow, so I hope you’re not lying.”

“I’ll be okay,” Jiyong says. Seungri nods, and takes it at face value, and steps ahead. Jiyong grabs at Seungri’s backpack. “Walk with me, maknae.”

“Alright,” Seungri says, and Youngbae gives them both a cryptic look and walks ahead.

“Why are you being so weird?”

“I need space,” Seungri says, and Jiyong laughs.

“No you don’t. You get lonely in the shower. That’s why you take your phone in there with you so you can chat with Dara-noona while you wash your hair.”

Seungri flushes. “I don’t need space from _her_ ,” Seungri says, and then he turns his head toward the line of taxis. The others are clustered together, and Daesung is still laughing, and Seungri wishes he felt like laughing, too.

“You need space from me?” Jiyong sounds amused, and Seungri watches him out of the corner of his eye as Jiyong twists his rings around his fingers, oversized sunglasses obscuring his eyes from Seungri’s view. “You can’t have it.”

“Because I’m your favorite?” Seungri asks, and Jiyong smiles softly, almost affectionately.

“Because I’m Tom, and you’re Jerry,” Jiyong replies. “I’m going to chase you forever.”

Seungri isn’t sure if he wants to laugh, or if he wants to cry. It’s never been Jiyong chasing Seungri, after all. It’s always been Seungri chasing Jiyong, and Seungri demanding attention from a man who offers attention only when he’s afraid you might leave if he doesn’t and takes it away again when he thinks it’ll hurt the most. Jiyong might be the one playing games, but it’s always been Seungri who’s been trying to catch Jiyong.

“You caught me a long time ago,” Seungri says instead, because it’s also true. Seungri can remember the moment it happened. He’d walked into a rehearsal room at Yang Hyun Suk’s heels and been introduced to Jiyong, and Seungri’s heart had skipped a beat.

“Good,” Jiyong says. “I’ve chased enough muses.” He’s already moving to email his girlfriend on his smart phone, pulling it from his pocket to catch the wifi. Because he’s gone and found someone else to love even though Seungri is right here, aching and wishing and waiting.

Seungri is Jiyong’s only constant muse.

Seungri wants to tell Jiyong. Tell Jiyong that on Tuesday, twenty minutes past his alarm and possibly getting late, Seungri realized that he was in love. That maybe he’d always been in love, but he didn’t know that was the name of it. That the overwhelming need for Jiyong to _see_ him has transformed from hero-worship to admiration to affection to something so consuming that it reaches into Seungri’s body and steals the breath right out of it.

But Seungri won’t say anything, because Jiyong had deliberated over his clothes this morning, and checked his phone a million times, and it wasn’t because of Seungri.

Jiyong’s in love with someone else again, and it isn’t Seungri. It’s never going to be Seungri, probably, and Seungri should bury these feelings as deep as he can because they’ve all got so much to lose.

It’s just difficult, when Jiyong smiles at him, pink gums and white teeth, as he slides his phone back into the pocket of his cropped pants. It’s difficult, in a way that nothing’s ever been difficult before.

Seungri just wants to be a branch strong enough to climb on.

“You don’t have to chase me,” Seungri says. “You already know that.”

“People have left before,” Jiyong says. Jiyong hooks his index finger into the bracelet that he’d had given Seungri, and Jiyong’s finger tickles lightly at Seungri’s wrist when he does. Seungri wishes he could quit Jiyong, who is as addictive as any drug but twice as dangerous, because Seungri is weak. “Maknae is mine.”

For better or for worse, it’s true, so Seungri doesn’t dispute his words.

“You two going to get in the car, or do I have wave a poster of Jiyong around so Seungri gets confused and follows it into the back seat?” Seunghyun asks, mischievously smirking. “You’re both tired enough that I bet it would work.”

“Sure you haven’t had a rum and cola already?” Seungri asks, and the moment is broken.

“We’re coming,” Jiyong says, and the palm he places at the small of Seungri’s back to guide him forward is like a brand.

*

Seungri isn’t afraid of rejection.

He’s been rejected before, and he’d stood there and taken it.

“There’s a ten percent chance,” Yang Hyun Suk had said, when only Hyunseung and Seungri were left standing, heads bowed, in front of him and the mirrors and all of their teachers. “If you stay, and you practice and train, there’s a ten percent chance that you’ll get to pass. It’s up to you if it’s worth it.”

Seungri had stayed. Seungri had stayed, and he had practiced, and in the end, ten percent had been enough. Seungri has passed. Seungri had been enough, after all.

Loving Jiyong is kind of like that. Only this time, there’s less than a ten percent chance, and maybe if he stays and stays, someday, he’ll pass all of Jiyong’s tests, and Jiyong will love him, and Seungri will be enough.

Only this time there’s no time limit, and Seungri knows, if after all is said and done, Jiyong still doesn’t accept him, there aren’t second chances, and Seungri will never be able to put himself back together again.

Besides, Jiyong is always changing the rules, so Seungri can never win this game, no matter what his name is.

 

*

 

Big Seunghyun leans forward and pushes Little Seunghyun’s hat down over his eyes. “You’re too nice, kid,” Big Seunghyun says, and Little Seunghyun smiles at him.

“What do you mean?”

“You keep letting Jiyongie push you around.” He clicks his teeth. “You gonna let him do that forever?”

“I can take it,” Little Seunghyun says. “I’m the youngest. It’s my job, right?”

“You’re getting strong,” Big Seunghyun says. “But no one is that strong.”

“I am,” Seungri replies, and it’s nothing but bravado, but he’ll make that a trademark.

 

*

 

Seungri and Youngbae are the only ones who go out for food. Jiyong and Seunghyun are probably fast asleep, and Daesung declines, opting to go to the gym instead. “I’ll get something quick afterwards,” Daesung says. “I feel tight from the plane.”

Youngbae, with a beanie pulled low on his brow, and Seungri, wearing jeans and a nondescript hoodie, don’t stick out very much on the street. It’s easier to blend in without brightly colored clothing and striking hair… Youngbae and Seungri just look like two guys in a million here, especially with their faces obscured with sunglasses, in a country where they aren’t exactly household names. It’s nice.

Youngbae walks like he knows where he’s going, but he doesn’t, really. They wind up walking all the way up to 58th street. In the end, they stop at a place called Whym, where they are slightly underdressed, and Seungri can barely read the menu, so he just orders based on Youngbae’s loose translations, something with chicken and avocado that sounds nice and American.

They eat mostly in silence, Youngbae sipping at his water more than he picks at his salad, pushing the food around on his plate. He seems anxious, or nervous, and Seungri figures he’ll come out with it in his own time.

“Seungri,” Youngbae finally says, and Seungri puts his sandwich down on his plate, looking up at Youngbae, who seems to finally be gathering up the words he wants to say. “I wanted to ask…”

“Yeah?” Seungri says, picking up a fry and playing with it. It’s weird to eat meals without rice. “What?”

“There’s something…” Youngbae presses his lips together hesitantly. His hands toy with his fork, spinning it between his fingers because Youngbae can never sit still. “Sad about you. Less bright.”

 

> _”The best point about Seungri is that he glows,” Jiyong had whispered, and Seungri gasped as Jiyong had dragged his pen cap across the inside of Seungri’s forearm. “He’s so bright he can light up a room.”_

 

“What do you mean?” Seungri doesn’t look up, eyes focusing instead on the watch around his wrist. The leather band is getting a bit worn. It’s not as flashy as the rest of his jewelry. His mother had given it to him for his birthday last year. It’s dull in comparison to the bracelet on his other wrist.

“I mean… for a long time now, you’ve looked…” Youngbae sighs. “I don’t know. Empty.”

Seungri swallows. “Hey, now, I’m the smartest of us all,” Seungri jokes. “Nothing empty here!” He raps lightly at his head with his knuckles, showing his teeth to Youngbae to deflect. “I’m insulted, hyung.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Youngbae says, setting his fork down. “You know it isn’t.”

Seungri lets his smile fall. “What do you want me to do?” Seungri says, and Youngbae frowns, eyebrows knitting together. “I’m sorry. I’ll try harder.”

 

> _”While watching you the past few weeks, I noticed some change in you.” Yang Hyun Suk leaned to the side to rest on the arm of the sofa. “And if I give you two years instead of two weeks… I’ll see even more change, right? You’re confident in that right?”_
> 
> _“Yes, I’m confident,” Seungri replied, trying to keep from crying._
> 
> _“So you’ll work hard, right? Don’t disappoint me with your effort.”_
> 
> _“I’ll work hard.”_

 

“Seungri, no.” Youngbae sounds confused. “Is there anything… what’s wrong?”

“It’s not anything you can help with,” Seungri says, and he remembers the way the others used to tease him when cried. The way Seunghyun would put his hand up to his face and pretend to be him, shoulders trembling and voice thick with tears. Seungri isn’t that boy anymore. Seungri can deal with things on his own. “I’ve been sad awhile, huh?” Seungri twists his bracelet on his wrist, enjoying the weight of it in his hand.

“Months,” Youngbae says, and Seungri laughs a little, and it sounds okay, he thinks. Almost like a real laugh.

It’s funny; Seungri had never realized that all the acting classes he’d taken in university would be necessary for real life.

Maybe he’s not really cut out for acting, after all.

“My heart figured it out before my head did, I guess,” Seungri says, and he picks up his sandwich and takes another bite.

“Have we done-“ Youngbae struggles with the words, because as good as he is at comforting, he’s not good at awkward conversations. Youngbae knows what to do with a Seungri that cries, but he probably has no idea what to do with a Seungri that refuses to.

“It’s not your fault that I prefer the whip to the carrot.”

“What do you…?”

“I’ll figure it out,” Seungri says, and he’s knotted up inside, because he knows, now, that he has to, before everyone starts to notice.

Seungri is cracking, weakening in the wind, his leaves scattering in every direction.

 

*

 

_“I might be just a small or big person in BIGBANG but I realized that I cannot lose my light. When all five members are shining, BIGBANG shines. If one member loses his light, there is no BIGBANG anymore.”_ \- Seungri

 

*

 

“Do you hate me?” Seungri asks, and Jiyong turns to look at him with cool eyes. His lower lip is swollen from biting.

“Now’s not the time for this,” Jiyong says. “Do you really think that now is the time for this?” Jiyong gestures to recording studio, where Youngbae is reading from a lyric sheet and getting ready. Jiyong is watching the whole recording session, because Jiyong likes to get really frustrated before he records his own vocals, and Seungri imagines that in the future, if they succeed, _when they succeed_ , it’s always going to be like this, Jiyong at the helm of this ship.

TOP and Daesung have stepped out for air, because it’s boiling hot July and it’s even hotter in the recording studio, where the ventilation sucks and where Seungri has staunchly remained. He has more to prove, it feels like. He can take the worst.

“Sorry,” Seungri says, and he wishes, just a little, that he Jiyong didn’t make him feel so painfully young. “You’re right.”

“Of course I am,” Jiyong mutters, licking his lips and turning back toward Youngbae to give him two thumbs up. “And no.”

“No?” Seungri asks, and Jiyong reaches out blindly, not bothering to look away from the glass wall of the recording booth. His hand finds a fistful of Seungri’s t-shirt, and Seungri is pulled closer, until the sweaty skin of his arm brushes Jiyong’s. Seungri likes the way they stick together, when they touch.

“I don’t hate you,” Jiyong says, and Seungri can hear the tiniest bit of gravel in his voice, and Jiyong releases his shirt but doesn’t move away, or ask Seungri to, either. “Don’t be so sensitive. Don’t be a baby. Don’t demand too much from me.”

“I won’t,” Seungri says fervently, and it’s a promise he’ll do his best to keep.

 

*

 

Perhaps because Seungri was the last to be chosen, Seungri is the first to worry he’s not doing enough.

He wakes up in the morning feeling lethargic, but he quickly climbs out of bed and does sit-ups and push-ups to wake his muscles.

Jiyong looks worse at breakfast, complexion a chalky white and mouth tight and drawn. He puts five sugars in his coffee, like he always does, and stirs it recklessly, spilling some of the drink over the sides.

“Well, isn’t this a cheerful breakfast,” Seunghyun croaks, when he makes it downstairs to the hotel breakfast room ten minutes late. “Not so fantastic, baby.”

“Jiyong looks like he’s going to die,” Youngbae says, “and Seungri might not be far behind.”

Daesung leans to the side and pokes at Jiyong’s face. “Hyung, are you going to be okay?”

“Of course I am,” Jiyong snaps, and Daesung withdraws immediately.

“Oh _boy_ ,” Seunghyun says. “Everyone’s just so _chipper_. So who’s excited for the concert?”

The ride to the theater is quiet. It only takes about five minutes, but Jiyong looks better when they arrive, a little bit of color coming back into his face. Seungri wants to ask if he needs anything, but Jiyong will say he doesn’t, so Seungri doesn’t waste his breath.

Jiyong does lean on Seungri’s shoulder, though, his soft cheek mashing into Seungri’s leather jacket, and Seungri can’t help but let his hand wander up to Jiyong’s hair and toy with the strands of it. The tension slides out of Jiyong’s body, and Seungri’s stomach twists.

At least one of them can relax.

Rehearsals go well, because now they know the choreography and the performances so completely that they can do it all in their sleep.

During lunch, Jiyong slips away, and Seungri focuses on Daesung, who keeps making bizarre gags using their meal as props, and on Seunghyun, who echoes him and embellishes, like some tag-team of ridiculousness that makes Seungri forget, for a while, about the sick feeling that’s found a home in his gut.

He excuses himself to go find the restroom, and when he finds it, Jiyong is sitting on the floor in the hallway, curled over his cell phone.

“Girlfriend?” Seungri asks, and Jiyong looks up, confused for a moment, before his face clears.

“No, Chaerin,” he says, and he smiles. “She’s having a ‘leader-problem’.”

“Dara-noona again?” Seungri says, flickering his gaze, taking note of Jiyong’s slightly shaky hands and the thin sheen of sweat along his skin.

“Of course,” Jiyong stretches his legs in front of him. There are holes in the knees of his pants. He probably bought them that way.

“Ah, it’s hard work being leader, isn’t it?” Seungri wants to sit down next to Jiyong, and let Jiyong tangle their legs together at the ankle. Maybe press a kiss to Seungri’s neck.

Seungri is a masochist.

“Chaerin doesn’t have you,” Jiyong says, and Seungri gives in, sitting down next to Jiyong and leaning his back against the wall. “My maknae.”

“I’m so cute you can’t possibly be stressed, right?” Seungri says, and Jiyong smirks.

“Is that what you think?” Jiyong’s voice lilts like a songbird as he speaks, and Seungri clenches his hands into fists. Jiyong’s mouth is shiny in the dim fluorescents, and Seungri remembers, with startling clarity, the way that mouth had felt dragging hot and wet across his collarbones, leaving tiny marks in it’s wake.

That was a long time ago.

Seungri’s almost forgotten. It hadn’t meant anything, anyway. That’s not what Seungri is to Jiyong. Not what Jiyong wants him to be.

Seungri blinks.

“What else am I good for?” Seungri says, and Jiyong looks at Seungri with a strange shadow in his eyes.

“You’re my muse,” Jiyong says. “In more ways than one.” Jiyong stands abruptly. “Lunch is almost over.” And then he’s gone, leaving Seungri sitting alone in the hallway, shivering at the sudden chill in the air he hadn’t noticed when Jiyong was sitting right next to him, because Jiyong is like a fire.

Seungri is like glass. He’s fine in the fire, and he can take the heat, but when the fire is taken away, and he’s left to cool suddenly… that’s when he cracks, fissures running through places inside of him that should be solid after all these years. That should be stronger.

Seungri is never strong about Jiyong.

He gets a text from Dara. _make your leader stop giving chaerin advice! all of it is terrible._

_no can do,_ Seungri replies. _i do what leader tells me, not the other way around._

_he’s got a soft spot for you, seungri,_ Dara texts. _and i think chaerin is about to take things medieval back here in seoul._

_behave_ , Seungri texts, and then he leans back against the wall, still feeling the warmth Jiyong left behind.

 

*

 

Another start.

“Go away,” Jiyong says, as Seungri knocks tentatively on the door and peeks his head in. The room is mostly dark, but Jiyong is not asleep. He just sits there, eyes on the ceiling, mouth set in a deep frown that pulls at the bow of his top lip.

“Is everything alright?” Seungri asks, sitting on the edge of Jiyong’s bed. Two months ago, Seungri wouldn’t have dared, but Jiyong’s changed presence in his life lately, a physical presence that Seungri can’t ignore, has made him braver.

Jiyong is still. It’s strange, because even when Jiyong is alone, he’s never still. He’s always moving his hands, or nodding his head to a rhythm only he can hear. “Go away,” Jiyong says again, and Seungri hesitates.

“Are you sure-“ He reaches a hand toward Jiyong’s shoulder.

“Leave me alone,” Jiyong growls, and he grabs at Seungri’s wrist, nails digging into the skin like a warning.

“Okay,” Seungri says. “Sorry. I just thought you could tell me, if something was wrong-“

“Why would I tell _you_ anything?” Jiyong’s voice is low and harsh, like it’s ridiculous that Seungri had thought they were friends, or that Seungri might be someone worth confiding in. Maybe it is ridiculous, Seungri thinks, and to his embarrassment, he feels his eyes sting.

The wayward branch.

“Right,” Seungri says, and he pulls his wrist free from Jiyong’s grip and quickly exits the room, covering his face as he walks to his room. Once he’s inside, it’s okay to cry. Seungri hates to cry in front of the others, unless he’s in trouble and it will get him out of it.

And he’s getting too old for that, too.

Anyway, it’s stupid that he’s crying, because it’s stupid that he’d started to think maybe Jiyong had let Seungri inside his wall, if only just a little.

He presses his back against his own door, and he hears Youngbae sink down on the other side of it.

“Can you hear me?” Youngbae asks, and Seungri sniffles.

“Yes,” Seungri says, and Youngbae sighs.

“Don’t take it personally,” Youngbae says. “It’s not you.” Youngbae clears his throat. “You’ll learn to stay away during the quiet times.”

“Yeah?” Seungri asks.

“Yeah,” Youngbae says. “I just have years of experience.”

Later, when Seungri’s stopped feeling sorry for himself, and changed into his pajamas, he walks out to get some water from the kitchen. Jiyong is sitting on the sofa in the living room, hands clenched on his own knees.

“Seungri-yah,” he says, and Seungri pauses, and Jiyong leans his head back, to look up at him. His gaze beckons Seungri closer, and Seungri obeys, sitting down on sofa next to Jiyong, a good two feet of space between them. Jiyong sighs, and tugs on Seungri’s arm, dragging Seungri down into his lap.

“I’m not a easy person to deal with,” Jiyong says, running his hands through Seungri’s hair. Seungri’s eyes are still puffy from tears, and Youngbae is watching Jiyong carefully from the kitchen, like Jiyong is a kettle about to steam. “I can be mean.”

“Sometimes,” Seungri says, and Jiyong’s nails scrape across his scalp.

“I can’t control it,” Jiyong says. “I’m just like this. It’s who I am.”

“I know,” Seungri mumbles, lips pressed into Jiyong’s denim-clad thigh as he lies in Jiyong’s lap, legs stretched across the sofa.

“Then why are you here?” Jiyong asks, voice sharp and a little too loud. Youngbae turns quickly to look at them, but Seungri doesn’t acknowledge his questioning gaze. Jiyong doesn’t mean any kind of figurative ‘here’, Seungri knows. Seungri lifts his arm and grabs a handful of Jiyong’s t-shirt, the fabric soft in his grip.

“I don’t know,” Seungri says, because he doesn’t. All he knows is that Jiyong is addictive, like a drug, and even when it’s hard to be close to him, Seungri doesn’t want to pull away.

“How far will you let me push you?” Jiyong asks, and there’s something hidden in the question that Seungri doesn’t understand.

“I don’t know,” Seungri replies, and Jiyong’s hand, steadily combing through his hair, lulls him into a half-sleep.

“Don’t demand too much of me,” Jiyong warns. “You’ll only be disappointed.”

 

*

 

Seungri used to think there were two G-Dragons. G-Dragon on stage, and G-Dragon off-stage. G-Dragon bare-faced and tired and mind racing with ideas and moments and tickling harmonies, and G-Dragon with his eyes rimmed with black, adrenaline pumping and a blank, powerful emptiness in his eyes as he takes in the screaming crowd.

Seungri is older now, and he knows better. Now he knows that there are two Jiyongs, and it doesn’t have much to do with the stage at all.

There is the Jiyong that feels too much, and the Jiyong that doesn’t feel nearly enough.

It’s like Russian-Roulette, Seungri thinks, and every time he talks to Jiyong it’s like holding a gun to his head and pulling the trigger. That’s all right, though, Seungri thinks, because he’s gotten used to the way the bullet feels embedded in his brain. It hurts, but not enough to make him too afraid to try again.

Seungri doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to pull away from Jiyong, Because sometimes, Jiyong smiles at him like he’s the only person in the room, and Seungri feels like he can fly.

 

*

 

A false start. It only happens once, but once is enough to make things complicated, at least for Seungri.

Jiyong’s mouth is insistent, covering Seungri’s lips like he wants to devour him, and Seungri is just as weak to this assault as he is to everything Jiyong does. Jiyong’s hands find their way up inside Seungri’s shirt, tracing distracting patterns along the skin at Seungri’s waist, fingertips gently stroking there even as his mouth is brutal and relentless. Seungri gasps at all the sensation, but Jiyong takes it as an invitation, tongue slipping in and curling eagerly around Seungri’s, and Seungri is lost.

Seungri is always lost, with Jiyong, because Jiyong is like the rolling sea in a lightening storm and Seungri is just a tiny rowboat trying to stay afloat in the midst of it all, water leaking in between rotted wooden boards and paddles long ago swallowed by the waves.

Seungri is always lost, and right now, he’s not sure he wants to be found, because even though he’s confused and anxious and terrified, the way Jiyong’s entire being is focused on him makes Seungri feel like drowning might, in the end, be the only relief he ever gets.

“Seungri,” Jiyong whispers against the wet skin of his chin, and his voice is low and dangerous and Seungri just closes his eyes so he can hear it more easily, letting his own name on Jiyong’s lips slow the too-fast beating of his heart. Seungri doesn’t know what to do with his hands, pressing them against the wall behind him as he leans against it for support.

“Hyung,” Seungri says, and maybe some of his desperation, some of his fear, shows in his voice, because Jiyong pauses, hands stilling and settling on Seungri’s hips. His mouth, hot and slick with saliva, maybe Seungri’s, maybe his own, drags across Seungri’s cheek and stops at his jaw. Seungri can’t breathe.

“Do you want me to stop?” Jiyong whispers, the husky tone sending a shiver down Seungri’s spine, and Seungri is helpless to his own want.

Jiyong takes and takes and Seungri knows this will hurt later, because it always does, but he doesn’t really know how to do anything but hurt with Jiyong anyway. “No,” Seungri says, and then Jiyong’s hand is slipping down the waistband of his track pants, lips like fire on the skin of Seungri’s neck.

“Okay,” Jiyong says, and Seungri shatters beneath him.

They don’t talk about it. It doesn’t happen again.

Seungri wonders if this is another part of Jiyong’s game.

 

*

 

Seungri thinks it is perhaps the greatest tragedy of his life to have fallen in love with Kwon Jiyong.

He wakes up in the morning with a weight on his chest that feels like a ship anchor, holding him down beneath the water, pushing him into the ocean floor, making it impossible to breathe, and now that feeling has a name. _Love._

Once, Seungri had thought falling in love would be amazing and beautiful, like a revelation that would make everything more lucid. It is like that, but it’s also like being torn apart into thousands of pieces, shredded by reality and dreams deferred. Everything is achingly clear, and all Seungri wants to do is close his eyes.

Seungri starts to regret, just a little. _(Okay, maybe a lot.)_

 

*

 

Their first ever American show is loud. It’s _so_ loud; even louder than it had been in Europe, and the sea of multicolored faces is enough to spin Seungri’s head. The other members are thrumming with it too- there’s a bit of extra swagger to TOP’s walk, and Jiyong is flying across the stage. Youngbae is doing cartwheels and backflips, and Daesung’s voice is soaring, and Seungri feels like he’s full of energy.

It’s like the troubles that have been haunting him the past week have melted away in the face of this: BIGBANG, at the end of the day, is the biggest source of Seungri’s happiness, even if sometimes it’s the biggest source of Seungri’s despair, too. He lives his life on the edge of his seat.

Seungri knows, in moments like this, when _Tonight_ is blasting from the speakers, and an entire arena is filled with people singing the words to their song, in a language most of them probably don’t even know, that he’d never trade any of it for anything.

Seungri’s life isn’t perfect, but no one’s is, and right now, Seungri feels a little like he’s touching heaven.

Seungri’s not the weak branch, tonight. He’s a strong lower limb, filling in the empty spaces. Blooming.

Seungri’s eyes meet Jiyong’s, and Jiyong is glowing, an incandescent figure even amongst the neon lights, and Seungri is going to explode.

After the last bow, Jiyong loops his arm around Seungri’s neck and kisses his ear. “Good job, maknae.”

Seunghyun mimics him, kissing Seungri’s other ear, and Jiyong playfully growls. “What? I can’t congratulate maknae on riling up the girls, too?”

“Maknae is mine,” Jiyong says, and Seunghyun laughs.

“Yeah, we all know. I’m not trying to lose a hand or anything.” Seunghyun pushes his glasses up on his sweaty nose. “Maknae doesn’t want us, anyway.”

Seungri grabs Jiyong’s hand, and it’s an unfathomable electricity, and Seungri wonders, as he gazes at Jiyong’s perfect smile, the pink of his gums and the white of his teeth bright even under the backstage lights, if he’s always been Jiyong’s and now he just knows a name for that belonging.

“Ready for the encore?” Jiyong yells over the screaming crowd, and Seungri feels like he can soar.

 

*

 

Jiyong can be just like a child.

Playful like a child.

 

>   
> _Jiyong takes a handful of the frosting and rubs it across Seungri’s face, laughing joyously as Seungri sputters, licking as much of hit as he can off of his mouth and turning to stare at Jiyong, who’s got the sticky pink sugar all over his fingers, and a bit on his own mouth._
> 
> _“Maknae looked too serious,” Jiyong says, and Seungri reaches a hand up to touch the frosting in disbelief. “Now you look sweet.”_
> 
> _The frosting_ tastes _sweet, and Seungri starts laughing, and Jiyong slings an arm about his neck and mashes their cheeks together. They adhere with the frosting, and Jiyong is laughing and laughing, giggles rambling over each other and making Seungri feel as though there’s nothing but helium inside them both, and they’ll float away together smelling of strawberry frosting and idyllic moments._  
> 

 

Selfish like a child.

 

> _”Maknae is mine,” Jiyong says to the camera, as if to remind everyone in the world that no one else is allowed to touch._
> 
> _“Clingy much?” Seunghyun says, once the cameras aren’t rolling, and Jiyong frowns and wraps his arms around Seungri. Jiyong is stronger than he looks. All wiry strength and determination. Seungri doesn’t fight the embrace._
> 
> _“I don’t want to share him,” Jiyong says, and Seungri swallows, and tries not to read into it._
> 
> _After all, Seungri is only a toy that Jiyong wants when he thinks someone might take it away._

 

Destructive like a child.

 

>   
> _Jiyong throws the glass at the wall. “It’s so stupid.”_
> 
> _“It’s not,” Seungri says calmly, even though his heart is hammering in his chest. “Heartbreak is hard.”_
> 
> _“What would you know?” Jiyong says, standing up from his desk and cornering Seungri, taking both hands to shove him into the wall. “Tell me what the _fuck_ you know about heartbreak, maknae.”_
> 
> _Seungri winces, because Jiyong’s fingers are digging into his shoulders and the wall has no give behind him. Jiyong presses his forehead to Seungri’s sternum, hands going lax, and Seungri reaches up to hug him._
> 
> Everything _, Seungri wants to say, but he doesn’t, because it’s something he shouldn’t feel._
> 
> _“I’m sorry,” Jiyong mumbles into his chest. “I’m going to break you one day, maknae.”_
> 
> _“I know,” Seungri says, and wonders if Jiyong hasn’t already done it._  
> 

 

Innocent like a child.

 

>   
> _When Jiyong is happiest, he looks at the world like everything is beautiful._
> 
> _He writes the lyrics to_ Butterfly _on the walls of his bedroom with a cheap number two pencil, and Seungri watches him. Jiyong looks like a butterfly himself, brightly colored and fluttering, and this is the side of Jiyong that Seungri cherishes the most._
> 
> _Jiyong looks over at Seungri, eyes alight with a passion that makes him seem almost feverish, and Seungri’s heart climbs up into his throat and stays there._  
> 

 

Jiyong can be just like a child. Sometimes.

 

*

 

Some starts are more ambiguous.

Seungri wakes to Jiyong sitting astride him, strong thigh on either side of Seungri’s hip, one hand pushing into the small of Seungri’s back.

“Hyung?” Seungri asks, and day hasn’t broken yet. Only moonlight illuminates Seungri’s room. His sheets press rough into his cheek.

“Shh,” Jiyong says, and that’s when Seungri feels the marker on his back. Jiyong’s right hand is using Seungri’s back as his notebook; a canvas for his art. Seungri can feel the felt tip of the marker brushing along the skin, wet and soft, and the smell of alcohol fills the air.

“What are you-?”

“I ran out of pages,” Jiyong says distractedly, and on the bed, Seungri sees discarded sheets of lined paper and the bursting spiral book, and he exhales.

Seungri doesn’t respond. He just lets Jiyong use him to get all the words out, the marker almost soothing. He can feel the _hangeul_ stretching across his shoulder-blades and winding down his spine, the side of Jiyong’s hand trailing across his flesh, sticky with smeared ink.

“Yes,” Jiyong whispers. “These are the words I wanted.” He looks down on Seungri with a half-lidded gaze of satisfaction, and Seungri can feel himself getting hard. He wills it away.

It’s not like that; it’s not supposed to be like that. Seungri shudders. Jiyong traces his own writing with an idle finger, and it tingles. Seungri’s skin feels oddly tight.

In the morning, Jiyong lies asleep next to him, hands black with ink and lips curled into a full smile. Seungri quietly rises and retreats to the bathroom, and when he sees himself in the mirror, he has to bite down a gasp.

He’s got lyrics down his arms, in the crooks of his elbows, and he’s got words rubbed out on his chest, illegible letters climbing his neck and disappearing into his hairline.

Jiyong appears behind him, messy hands resting on Seungri’s hips.

“All my words are in you,” Jiyong says, and Seungri feels something change inside of him. He doesn’t know what it is, but it’s as bittersweet as the end of summer.

 

*

  
The magnificent morning shines through the curtains  
Your outstretched hand calling to me  
Secretly, come to my bed  
Quietly, so know one will know

-G-Dragon, _Breathe_

*

 

“What are you doing?” Jiyong asks, and Seungri takes another drag of his cigarette. The New York air is a little thick, but in the dark, Seungri can’t see how gray it is. In the end, all cities are the same, anyway, especially on a cool September evening when it’s all streetlights and cars and shut-down-for-the-night buildings with occupied offices on the upper floors.

“What does it look like I’m doing, hyung?” Seungri asks, and Jiyong walks up beside him, to lean on the rail. The expensive red leather of his jacket is stark against the hotel’s black-painted railing. It kind of looks like blood, Seungri thinks, as Jiyong stands close enough that their arms brush.

“I mean, why do you look so pensive?” Seungri looks at Jiyong out of the corner of his eye, and his face is so pale in the evening light, only starshine and neon illuminating his profile. He looks like a ghost, Seungri thinks, dangerous and almost transparent.

Still, his presence is overwhelming. Seungri takes another pull of smoke. “I’m not pensive. I’m just enjoying the quiet.”

“New York City is never quiet,” Jiyong says, and his voice is huskier than usual, maybe a little raw from their show. It’s the second night, and that’s always the roughest on the Jiyong’s voice, before he gives in and starts using antiseptic sprays to sooth and calm his inflamed vocal chords. “Just like Tokyo is never quiet. Just like Seoul is never quiet.”

“It’s quiet enough,” Seungri says, and now he drinks from his glass, a bitter rum that sits funny in his stomach but makes him feel better than he’d felt before he stepped outside.

“You don’t even like the quiet,” Jiyong says, and he reaches over and steals the cigarette, inhaling and letting the smoke out from his nose. It’s stark in the air, starker than it looks when Seungri releases it from his own lips. Maybe it’s just that the things Jiyong does always seem more vibrant in Seungri’s eyes. More bright.

“I do, sometimes,” Seungri says firmly, and Jiyong leans closer, until they’re aligned enough that Jiyong can rest his head on Seungri’s shoulder. “Like the quiet, I mean. I get tired, too.”

“If you say so,” Jiyong says, and Seungri reclaims his cigarette, and takes another sip of his drink. “Are you going out tonight?”

“I was thinking about it,” Seungri hedges, and taps his drink gently against the rail, enjoying the tiny chime as the glass hits the metal. Traffic on the street below seems so much dimmer in comparison to that sound, and the sound of Jiyong’s breathing. There’s a wheeze in his exhale that worries Seungri. “You still sound like you’re getting sick.”

“I am,” Jiyong says. “So stay home with me instead.” Jiyong straightens and pulls away, grabbing Seungri’s forearm and dragging him back inside. “Keep me company.”

“What if I want to go out?” Seungri says, but he can already feel himself caving, trying to remember which of his bags his favorite sweatpants are in, and whether or not he should go out and get carry-out, or call for room-service, so Jiyong can stay inside where it’s warm.

Jiyong releases him, and he sets his glass down on the small table, and puts his cigarette out in the ashtray there.

Jiyong collapses on Seungri’s hotel bed, sprawled out until his small body fills the space, and a peek of pale skin appears between his jeans and his t-shirt. “I don’t care,” Jiyong says. “I’ll get lonely.”

Seungri sits down on the edge of the bed and looks down at Jiyong, who is looking up at him with heavy eyes. A small smile tugs at the corner of Jiyong’s lips, because he knows he’s won. He always wins.

It’s Seungri who is named V.I.C.T.O.R.Y, but it is Jiyong who is the victor.

“You should go to sleep,” Seungri says, and even as he speaks, he’s shrugging out of his jacket, standing up to lay it across the chair. “How’d you even get in here?”

It’s Seungri’s room. They make enough money and paid enough dues that they all get their own rooms now, when they travel. They’re doing international concerts, and they see enough of each other anyway. Seungri likes having his own space. He likes playing at being an adult.

“I’m the leader,” Jiyong says. “I asked manager for your key.” He shimmies out of his red leather jacket, and Seungri takes it from his hands without asking and lays it on top of his own. “She didn’t give it to me, but she let me in.”

“Oh,” Seungri says, and it’s the blue bag, he thinks, that will have his sweatpants. He digs around in the bag, wrinkling his clothes, and when he finds the sweats, he straightens, the fabric of them soft in his hands from so much wear.

Jiyong is already asleep, somehow, his chest rising slowly up and down and his mouth soft in slumber. He looks innocent, when he’s asleep. He looks gentle.

He’s not either of those things, but with his eyelashes a stark black against his smooth pale skin, he looks like an angel. Seungri stares at him for a moment, taking in the sheen of sweat on his forehead that makes Seungri think he might have a fever, because it’s too cool in the room for Jiyong’s jacket to make him perspire.

Seungri sighs, and runs a hand through his hair, mussing it, and retreats to the bathroom. The tile is cool beneath his feet, and the water from the faucet takes too long to warm up, so Seungri uses the cold to wash his face, freeing it from the last of the stage make-up. He’d like to shower, but Jiyong is particular- he’d wake up to the sound of the water drumming against the tub, and Seungri doesn’t want to disturb him. So he just changes into his sweats and drags his t-shirt over his head, leaving it and his jeans in a pile on the bathroom floor.

He texts Youngbae that he isn’t going out, and Youngbae texts him back a frowny face that makes Seungri smile. Seunghyun will go; he’d been pumped up earlier about it, and he’s liable to drag Daesung with him. Youngbae won’t be alone.

He sits down on the bed again, and doesn’t bother to pull down the sheets. Instead, he grabs the blanket at the end of the bed, pulling it up over both of them. Seungri rolls so he’s looking at Jiyong, and carefully, slowly, presses a hand to Jiyong’s forehead. It’s hot. Jiyong always gets sick at the worst possible moment.

He remembers when Yang Hyun Suk had announced the final member cut. Jiyong had gotten deathly ill, his voice hoarse and his body weak. He’d pulled through. It had been Seungri who’d been cut.

Seungri should call their manager, probably, and go and wet a towel with cold water for Jiyong’s head. He starts to get back up, sore muscles aching from the show, and Jiyong moves, all of a sudden, and wraps an arm around Seungri’s waist, pinning him to the bed. “Don’t go,” Jiyong says, and it’s hot air against the cool bare skin of Seungri’s shoulder, where the blanket doesn’t reach.

Seungri swallows, and closes his eyes. He can still taste the cigarette smoke and rum in his mouth. He forgot to brush his teeth.

“Do I ever go?” Seungri asks, and it’s a rhetorical question. “I just keep staying. I always stay.”

“Good,” Jiyong says. “Because I’m selfish.”

“I know,” Seungri says, and he brings his outside are up to brush Jiyong’s hair from his face. The strands are soft, and a bit damp. “I know that better than anyone.” He whispers it, but Jiyong’s fingers tighten, pressing hard enough to bruise.

“Then why do you stay?” Jiyong asks, and he doesn’t mean just tonight. He means all nights, like this one, when Seungri stays and stays, and does whatever Jiyong asks of him just because it’s Jiyong who has asked.

Seungri doesn’t know. He’s been trying to figure it all out for years and years, and he’s got nothing to show for it but a more resilient smile for the cameras, one that hides more than it reveals, and a heart that beats too fast when Jiyong smiles at him in that way that makes him feel like he’s the only person in the universe.

And yes, maybe that’s the whole story right there, in that smile: Seungri has tried and tried to feel nothing about Kwon Jiyong but at the end of the day, he still feels _everything._

“One day,” Seungri says, after a long pause, (and maybe Jiyong has slipped back into sleep already,) “I’ll know the answer to that.”

Jiyong doesn’t answer, but Seungri doesn’t really expect him to. Jiyong’s arm slips around him more fully, more like a hug than a demand now, palm flat on Seungri’s lower back, the two of them lying face to face. Jiyong slips a leg in between Seungri’s, like he does whenever he sneaks into Seungri’s room, seeking inspiration or warmth or whatever Jiyong is looking for in him that he doesn’t seem to be able to find in of anyone else. Seungri used to shake, nervous and anxious and confused. Now, Seungri still feels all those things about Jiyong, but he doesn’t shake, because Seungri has become stronger, but Jiyong’s embrace still makes him feel weak.

Seungri opens his eyes, and his light is still on, and Jiyong’s fevered gaze almost looks through him. The denim of Jiyong’s jeans chafes, even through Seungri’s sweats. “Do you love me, maknae?” Jiyong mumbles, and he smells like Seungri’s cigarette and expensive cologne.

“Yes,” Seungri replies, because he does, he always does, even when it hurts.

Jiyong pulls and tugs, and Seungri is sure he’ll snap off the tree under the pressure.

 

*

 

Seungri starts a conversation.

“Sometimes,” Seungri says. “I do like the quiet.”

“But?” Jiyong is distracted, one hand stroking the bone at Seungri’s ankle, and the other hitting keys on his laptop. Seungri’s room is filled with sound as Jiyong plays with a melody. Seungri is surprised he answers at all.

“But not for long,” he says, and Jiyong turns to look at him. “Because when I’m left alone with my thoughts I’m afraid I might go crazy.”

Left alone with his thoughts, Seungri always finds Jiyong. Jiyong’s smile that is Seungri’s sun and Seungri’s moon, and every star in Seungri’s sky.

Seungri doesn’t want to find Jiyong. Seungri longs for a time when everything made sense.

Jiyong studies him now, and Seungri’s insides are too warm, too tangled up.

Then again, Seungri wouldn’t trade Jiyong for anything, and maybe that’s the problem.

“I’m already crazy,” Jiyong says. “When I’m left alone with my thoughts,” he twists a piece of hair around his finger, “they become music.”

“And when you’re left with me?”

“You become the words.”

 

*

 

“You talk like you’re in love with him,” Dara says. She’s lacing up her sneakers. It’s 2NE1’s first Inkigayo performance, today. Seungri just wanted to wish her luck.

“Of course I’m not. That would be stupid.”

“I don’t know why you think you’re so smart,” Dara replies. “You’re just as dumb as any other teenage boy, even if you know how to invest in stocks or whatever.”

“Falling in love with Kwon Jiyong would be dangerous for someone like me. I’m too practical.”

“Okay,” Dara says, and she ruffles his hair. “Wish me luck, kid.”

“Good luck,” Seungri mumbles, and Dara’s words

> _”you talk like you’re in love with him,”_

echo in his head for the rest of the afternoon.

*

 

Smile. Laugh. Tell a bad joke. Play a prank. Smile again. Someone will jokingly insult him, and Seungri will laugh it off, brushing the remarks off his shoulders like they’re nothing but snowflakes, and things will move forward. Lather, rinse, repeat. It’s been like this ever since he became Seungri instead of Little Seunghyun. Ever since he survived his second chance and became the last member of BIGBANG. The youngest. The one who’d had to prove everything all over again, eyes heavy as he sang. The one YG hoped would ‘grow’.

Sometimes, he thinks Seungri has grown. Seungri is strong. Seungri can take the coldest of winters, and Seungri stands tall even in a blizzard.

Seungri knows his role, by now, and he’s exceptionally good at falling into the rhythm of it. It’s not a very complicated dance, after all, and Seungri’s always been the best at choreography.

Sometimes, he thinks that’s enough. Sometimes, he starts to fear it isn’t.

 

*

 

Everyone thinks Daesung is the member with the most secrets. They might be right, but Seungri has a lot of secrets too. He buries them alive, and they squirm and press up against the soil and scream for air, please, air. In the end though, the secrets always quiet in their graves, and Seungri’s heart is left a little heavier behind his smile.

Seungri has never told anyone about the way Jiyong finds him in the dark, whisper of his hands like fire on Seungri’s skin. He’s never told anyone, and it’s the most painful secret he’s ever kept.

Seungri’s heart is a secret, and Seungri is scared that when it quiets, like all the other secrets eventually do, Seungri will never be able to love anyone else.

 

*

 

_have you seen jiyong?_ says the text from Seunghyun. Another quickly follows. _manager is looking for him and he’s not in his room._

Seungri blinks blearily at his phone, before turning to look at Jiyong. Jiyong’s shirt is soaked through with sweat, and the remnants his eyeliner is smudged around his eyes. Seungri stretches and arm up, and Jiyong is hot… too hot, and Seungri sighs and types a response on his phone.

_he’s with me,_ Seungri replies. _fever._ Jiyong shifts as he types, and Seungri pulls Jiyong against his chest. He knows Jiyong is sick because Jiyong doesn’t protest, just grabs onto Seungri tightly and pushes his face into Seungri’s neck. He’s burning up.

Their manager lets herself into the room, and Seunghyun is hot at her heels. She doesn’t say anything about Jiyong wrapped up in Seungri’s arms, but Seunghyun gives him a long, measuring look.

Manager-noona sits on the bed and pulls a thermometer out of her tiny first aid kit. “Seungri, get out of my way,” she says, and Seungri moves to comply, but Jiyong whines when Seungri moves, and hooks his ankle around Seungri’s, and Seungri smiles at her sheepishly.

“He’s always a baby when he gets sick,” she mutters, and Seungri pats Jiyong on the arm gently.

“I’m not leaving you,” Seungri whispers into Jiyong’s ear, and Jiyong’s forehead smoothes. “You’re sick. Our manager-noona will take care of you.”

Jiyong relaxes, and Seungri slides off the bed, standing up next to Seunghyun.

“That’s why you didn’t come out last night?”

“He asked me not to,” Seungri says, not meeting Seunghyun’s intense gaze. “He asked me to stay. So I stayed.” Seungri scratches at his neck. “I didn’t know he’d get so sick or I would have called you back earlier.”

“You’ll really do whatever he wants, won’t you?”

“Yes,” Seungri admits, and he looks down at his feet. He’s got a blister from one of his new pairs of stage shoes. It doesn’t hurt much. “Mostly?”

“Do you ever ask for anything back?” Seunghyun nudges Seungri with his elbow, and the look in his eyes, when Seungri meets his gaze, is calm and understanding.

Seungri doesn’t want to be understood. Seungri wants to not feel this at all.

“Jiyong’s always told me not to demand too much from him,” Seungri says, and Seunghyun nods.

“Let’s get breakfast,” Seunghyun says, changing the subject. “Since I’m up at this ungodly hour anyway.”

“Missing your mom’s cooking?”

“My mom is an amazing cook,” Seunghyun replies. “You’d miss it too.”

“Momma’s boy.”

Jiyong opens his eyes just as Seungri turns to check on him.

“Maknae,” he says, and Seungri never says no.

“Ah, looks like I’ll be going with Daesung, then,” Seunghyun says, and Seungri sits down on his bed. “Later, kid.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Seungri says, and locks Jiyong’s fingers with his own.

“You’ll get sick too,” their manager says, and Seungri smiles at her, and remembers how she’d cried and hugged him, back when they’d both thought he was going home, another trainee that didn’t make it.

“No, I won’t,” Seungri says, and he brushes Jiyong’s hair back from his face. “Don’t worry about me.”

“I worry about you the most,” she says, and pats his hand.

“I’m strong,” Seungri says, and she smiles, round cheeks stretching.

“You are,” she says. “But you’re the baby.” She stands. “You’ll stay with him? I have to make a phone call to Korea.”

“Yeah,” Seungri says. “I’ll stay.”

When she leaves, Seungri lies down next to Jiyong, propping his head up on his hand, elbow digging into the mattress.

“Strong baby,” Jiyong murmurs, and Seungri wonders if he’ll ever truly be able to escape the way just being next to Jiyong makes him feel like the rest of his life is in black and white, and only these moments are in color.

 

*

 

_“It felt like I was sinning every time I looked at people. It was sort of a depression.”_ \- G-Dragon

 

*

 

The only thing Jiyong has ever stolen is Seungri’s heart.

He certainly has never stolen art.

Jiyong wrings each note out of himself in a painful process, screaming at his bedroom walls and crying in the bathroom when he thinks no one is listening. He pretends that it’s easy for him when people ask, but it’s not. He etches the words into his skin with his own hands, nails leaving crescents of frustration behind as he moves the words around in his head, biting down on his tongue, brow furrowed as he stares into nothing.

The start of Seungri seeing Jiyong as someone he wants to protect is when the internet explodes with a plagiarism scandal.

Seungri remembers when Jiyong was writing _Heartbreaker_. Every piece of that song came from Jiyong’s failing relationship with Mizuhara Kiko, whose exotic beauty had captivated Jiyong from the moment he saw her in a magazine. She was wild and untamable, and Jiyong had been caught in her spell.

Seungri had thought, then, that Jiyong might have found a new muse. Seungri had prepared himself to return to Jiyong looking through him instead of at him. For distance to appear between them, somehow.

It hadn’t happened. And then there’d been _Heartbreaker._ Kiko had served as a muse one last time before she faded away like all the others.

When Jiyong gets accused of plagiarism, he destroys the kitchen. He breaks a chair, three glasses, and the left cabinet where they keep cereal and the uncooked rice. He screams and screams, and only Seungri is around to hear him.

The accusation tears Jiyong apart. It’s the first time Seungri has felt like Jiyong might need him to be strong for him instead of because of him.

“It’ll be okay.” And Seungri pulls Jiyong into his side. Jiyong fights the hug at first, hissing and coiling his muscles up tight like Seungri is grasping an armful of serpents, but then Jiyong seems to lose all tension, collapsing into Seungri’s embrace. “It’ll be okay.”

“When did you grow up?” Jiyong whispers, later, and Seungri smiles into the crown of his head.

“A long time ago,” Seungri says. “I had to.”

“Thank you,” Jiyong says, and Seungri wonders if it’s normal to feel like one person is the center of your entire world.

Seungri starts to think it isn’t.

 

*

 

>   
> _”You should date seriously,” Jiyong says. “Your music will get better. Your writing will feel more real.” He doesn’t look at Seungri._
> 
> _“I just need to find the right girl,” Seungri replies, spinning his bracelet on his wrist. It’s become as much of a tick as Jiyong and his rings, and he does it when he’s thinking. Another thing he’s picked up from his hyung. “Before dating again.”_
> 
> _“What kind of girl is_ the right girl _maknae?” Jiyong fiddles with the dials, and Seungri licks his lips._
> 
> _“A girl kind of like you,” Seungri says, and Jiyong looks over his shoulder._
> 
> _“You don’t want a girl like me, maknae. You don’t want a person like me to love you.”_
> 
> _“Why not?” Seungri says, and Jiyong scratches at the side of his face with his index finger, the way he’s taken to doing so he doesn’t mess up his caked on stage make-up._
> 
> _“Because someone like me will tear you apart,” Jiyong says finally, and Seungri starts to think it might be a price he’s willing to pay._  
> 

He gives Jiyong _Sonagi_ tickets. It’s Seungri’s ex-girlfriend who comes to the show that night, and Seungri almost cries.

 

*

 

Jiyong’s beaten the worst of his illness by the time they make it to Las Vegas.

Seungri doesn’t catch whatever Jiyong’s got, despite the fact that he spent four days lying next to a cranky, sickly Jiyong who kept demanding Seungri order terrible, calorie-ridden things from room service and almost refused to let Seungri take showers. They switched back and forth between his room and Jiyong’s, so room service had the chance to clean, and Jiyong treated them both like they were his room, tossing his things around and moving Seungri’s books off the bedside tables. Jiyong refused to see a doctor, because he only trusts the one Yang Hyun Suk keeps on staff, so they’d just had to wait it out.

Seungri didn’t mind; after all these years, he’s used to most of Jiyong’s quirks.

What’s new is the way Jiyong clung to him even more than usual. “Don’t leave,” he’d said, over and over again, as his fever broke on the first day. “Maknae,” he’d croak, and grab for pieces of Seungri’s clothes as if to hold him close.

“Why do you keep saying that?” Seungri murmured to Jiyong’s sleeping face, and Jiyong had shifted, eyes flickering open.

“Because they always leave.” Jiyong’s words were barely audible, but Seungri heard them anyway.

“Where am I going to go?” Seungri replied, and Jiyong had just moved closer, all harsh angles, composed of elbows, knees, and cold feet.

He texts Dara when he’s bored, and sometimes Jonghyun will send him stupid Youtube videos, but Seungri, for the most part, just watches Jiyong sleep and fends off the teasing of their bandmates who joke about how Seungri is too pliant to Jiyong’s whims.

By the time they were on the plane to Toronto, Jiyong could stay awake for stretches of three or four hours at a time. It was enough to get them on the airplane.

Now, Jiyong is back to being prickly and distant, only allowing Seungri close on his own terms. It’s hard, but in some ways, it’s a relief to Seungri’s battered heart. It gives him a chance to start rebuilding the walls he’d let slip during the short week when Jiyong had been vulnerable. He’d allowed himself to soak up Jiyong’s warmth.

Now, Seungri has to remind himself that reality isn’t nearly as simple.

Vegas, contrary to New York, looks exactly like it did the last time BIGBANG had come. Seungri is still thrilled by the casinos and the women, and Youngbae still loves the way the music plays in the streets from the stores- American stuff, like what he listens to on his iPod.

Daesung is taking playful abuse from Seunghyun, and they’re too busy laughing at each other to pay attention to where they are. Seungri knows that later, Seunghyun will be off investigating the food, and Daesung will probably buy really slutty t-shirts.

Jiyong is on the phone most of the time. While he was sick, he’d left it off, and now he’s almost glued to it. That’s okay, because it gives Seungri a reason to keep away, even if he doesn’t particularly want to.

“Do you love your girlfriend?” Seungri asks, when they’re all out with their manager, enjoying a free afternoon, because he has a sick desire to know. “The new one?”

“No,” Jiyong says gruffly, locking his phone and slipping it into the pocket of his jeans. His bracelet, the one that matches Seungri’s, clinks against his studded belt. “I’m going to break up with her.”

“Just like that?” Seungri asks, surprised. “You never break up with your girlfriends. They always-“

“Break up with me?” Jiyong finishes. He puts his hands in the pockets of his jacket. “Yes, that’s true.”

“You’re always falling in love so quickly,” Seungri says, and he looks down the busy shopping street. He recognizes Daesung immediately, because his smile is so wide. He and Youngbae are pointing in the window of a shop, and Seungri thinks they’re looking at shoes.

“Not this time,” Jiyong says vaguely. “I can’t quite manage it, this time.”

“Why not?” Seungri asks, and regrets the question as soon as he asks it. It’s too invasive. “Ah, never mind. I’m not one to talk. I go through three or four girlfriends a minute.”

“You do like to be _bitten_.” A leer. “Have you ever been in love, maknae?” Jiyong looks up at the sky and the sun beats down on him, casting his face into a stunning mix of highlights and shadows.

“Yeah,” Seungri says, and it’s like all the sand of the Nevada desert is in his throat. He tries to subtly clear it, but not much about Seungri is subtle.

“Really?” Jiyong says, suddenly completely focused on Seungri. “I never knew. I mean… I thought you’d say no.” Jiyong laughs, and it reminds Seungri, suddenly, of the last time they were in Las Vegas. The way Jiyong had been so bright Seungri had sought relief on the neon casino floors. “Keeping secrets from me now, maknae?”

> _”Stop disappearing on us, maknae,” Seunghyun had said. “We keep thinking you’ve died. And then being disappointed when you come back.”_
> 
> _“Hyung!” Youngbae shakes his head in mock dismay, but he’s also laughingly dancing in his seat._
> 
> _“It’ll never be that easy,” Seungri replied with a laugh, and Jiyong had rested his hand on Seungri’s thigh and Seungri had felt adored._
> 
> _“Where do you keep going?”_
> 
> _“Does it matter?” Seungri asks. He’s not really going places. Just admiring the clear sky from the hotel roof. Breathing fresh air. But he’s got a reputation to uphold._
> 
> _“Keeping secrets from me now, maknae?” Jiyong asks, and Seungri wants to tell him everything._

“It’s not like it was…” Seungri licks his lips, “important.”

“One of your girlfriends?” Jiyong slides his sunglasses on, and now Seungri can’t read the expression on his face. “Which one?”

“Like you’d even know who I was talking about,” Seungri says with a laugh, and his hands slip into his pockets. He rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet, and Jiyong frowns.

“Of course I would,” Jiyong says. “I know all your girlfriends.” The way Jiyong clips the end of the sentence doesn’t invite questions, even if Seungri wants to ask him why he’d bother.

Seungri sighs. “It’s not one of them, anyway.” Seungri runs a hand through his hair. It’s getting long again. He’ll get it cut when they go home. “It’s more of the unrequited kind.”

“Oh,” Jiyong says. “I’m sorry.”

“Not as sorry as I am,” Seungri says, and even through the sunglasses, Seungri can feel Jiyong’s eyes boring into him. “Let’s catch up to the others.”

 

*

 

Jiyong gives him the bracelet unexpectedly one day. It isn’t a holiday, or a special occasion, just Seungri sitting outside, legs stuck through the railing and dangling below, forehead pressed against the metal as he surveys the quiet street.

Jiyong shoves a nondescript package into Seungri’s hand. “For you,” Jiyong says, and then he pinches Seungri’s cheek.

It’s heavy on Seungri’s wrist, the intricate silver woven in a knot-like pattern that both catches the light and shies from it. Out here, on the balcony, it catches both the shadows and the tiny glimmers of moonlight.

“Because,” Jiyong says. “Maknae is-”

“You like Youngbae best,” Seungri says, and Jiyong smiles; it’s a real one, and it makes something swell between Seungri’s ribs, something so massive that Seungri feels like it will fill him up and spill out of his ears and mouth and nose until his feelings are all out in the open for Jiyong to see. “Don’t tease me.”

“No,” and he straightens the bracelet so that the clasp is hidden underneath. “I like Youngbae differently. You are my muse.”

“I see,” and Jiyong is leaning forward, leaving a soft kiss on Seungri’s forehead. Seungri is giddy with emotions he doesn’t understand. He doesn’t need to understand them, because in the morning, Jiyong will snap at him or ignore him, and they’ll fade, disappearing back underneath the anxious feelings of wanting to do his best.

“Thank you for giving me my words,” Jiyong whispers, and Seungri is afraid he might catch on fire.

 

*

 

Daesung is quiet. It’s just him and Seungri watching television in Seungri’s room, the volume up loud as they cook instant noodles by heating water in the coffee pot and pouring it into the cardboard containers. Seungri had begged out of dinner with the band tonight, because he’s exhausted and because he needs a moment of space. Distance. Daesung joins him, because Daesung, for all his cheerful grins and loud, self-deprecating humor, is an introvert, and being around so many people for so long makes him stressed.

So the two youngest watch cartoons on cable in a language they don’t understand, just soaking in the silence.

“I think I’m stupid,” Seungri says aloud, licking the ramen broth off his lips. It tastes like salt and bad carbohydrates. Seungri will go for a run tomorrow. He likes taking advantage of relative anonymity.

“Why?” Daesung asks. His face is inscrutable, and he’s watching the screen carefully, smiling as the little cartoon hero gets into mishaps at school, but Seungri knows he’s listening. Daesung is always listening.

“Have you ever felt something you knew you weren’t supposed to feel?” Seungri tries not to think about the way Jiyong had looked at him, eyes bright with fever, and asked him to stay. He tries not to think about it, because he knows it doesn’t mean what Seungri needs it to mean.

What they have is not a relationship. Seungri is Jiyong’s only constant muse.

“Of course I have,” Daesung says, and then he hesitates. His bangs come down and cover his eyes. “Everyone has.”

“What do you do?” Seungri looks down at his sweatpants, and finds a lose thread to wind around his finger. “When you feel like you’re going slowly insane with it?”

“I pray,” Daesung shakes his head and bites his lip. “Or I tell myself that I can get through it. That I’m strong enough to do anything.”

“Strong?” Seungri says, and the word tastes funny on his tongue. He picks up his noodles and shoves more into his mouth, wooden chopsticks scratching against his teeth.

“You’re strong,” Daesung drinks the last of the broth from his noodle cup. “We’re all strong. We’ve had to be.”

“I feel weak,” Seungri says, and Daesung looks up at him, eyes revealing nothing. He puts a steady, comforting hand on Seungri’s shoulder, though, and Seungri appreciates it.

“You’re not,” Daesung says. He clears his throat. “Is this about Jiyong?”

“What?” Seungri can feel his eyes widen. “What are you-“

“When you’re not talking, it’s easier to listen. Easier to watch.” Daesung shrugs.

It’s like a hurricane inside of him. Seungri’s not sure what to feel, but the wind is harsh.

“I think I’m stupid,” Seungri says, finally, and Daesung chuckles.

“Aren’t we all?” Daesung looks up at the ceiling. Seungri wonders if he’s looking up at his God. “Aren’t we all?”

 

*

 

Doubt starts all the time. So does surety.

“Why do you keep coming back?” Jiyong says, and Seungri wipes his wet eyes.

“Because I’m your favorite,” Seungri replies, and Jiyong furrows his brow.

“You’re going to let me shatter you,” and Jiyong looks at Seungri- at, not through, and Seungri clutches nervously at his own knees.

“I’m strong,” Seungri says, and Jiyong laughs. It’s a raw, rough sound.

“No one is that strong.” Jiyong lights a cigarette. “No one has ever been that strong.” He takes a deep inhale. “You’ll never be able to take it.”

“I’ll try,” Seungri says, and the smoke stings in his nose and lungs.

Seungri wants to be a branch strong enough for Jiyong to stand on.

 

*

 

Jiyong ends things with his girlfriend when they get off the plane in Los Angeles. He doesn’t cry, and he doesn’t make a show of it. He just turns off his smart phone and slips it into his pocket, and doesn’t look at it anymore for the entire ride to the hotel in their overpriced taxi, and that’s how Seungri knows.

“It’s fine,” Jiyong brushes Seungri’s hand with the back of his own, and Seungri puts his hands in his pockets. Jiyong fiddles with his rings. He’s wearing four today, thick and silver and perfect for twisting in circles. Jiyong has his habits. “I’m no good for her.”

“Hyung…”

“I’m no good for anyone,” Jiyong says, and his eyes are looking out the taxi window. It’s just the two of them in this car, and their taxi driver doesn’t speak Korean, probably, so it feels like they’re alone. “I destroy everything I touch.”

“You create music.” Seungri shifts, and Jiyong just keeps staring at the highway. “You create art.”

“At what cost?” Jiyong says. “You’re avoiding me.”

“I’m not.” Seungri gulps, and pulls one hand free to grab Jiyong’s hand. “I’m not.”

“You are,” Jiyong says. “Since Korea.”

“I stayed with you. When you were sick.”

“And I got better, and you were gone again.” The taxi slows as they pull up into the hotel courtyard.

“Gone where?” Seungri asks. “Where can I go?” Seungri snort. “Where, huh?”

“I don’t know,” Jiyong says. “But I can feel you... pulling away.” Jiyong turns and pins Seungri with his gaze. “Inspiration is fleeting.”

“You don’t have to chase me,” Seungri says, as the taxi pulls to a stop. “I just-”

“Why?” Jiyong asks, and the driver makes an impatient sound.

“Because I’m weak,” Seungri says, and Jiyong’s eyes widen, before he looks away. “Because you’ve told me not to demand too much.” They get out of the car as their manager pays the driver. Jiyong walks around the car to stand next to Seungri. “Just give me… I’ll come back.”

“Have I finally pushed you away, maknae?” Jiyong’s voice is gentle. “You lasted longer than the rest.”

“No, hyung, I-“

Seungri just needs space. Time. Seungri needs to bury these feelings back where he’d kept them for all these years, before he realized, with a sickening lurch, what they were.

That’s not what Jiyong needs or wants from him.

Jiyong falls in love with girls, letting them break his heart.

Seungri just waits around for his heart to get broken, again and again. Seungri keeps trying to pass all the tests, but Jiyong keeps changing the rules.

Jiyong links their arms together, and presses a showy kiss to his cheek as Seunghyun walks over to them.

“Gross,” he says. “And now I don’t want lunch.”

“Yeah right,” Seungri says, and Seunghyun raises an eyebrow at him.

“Oh, maknae’s claws are out.” Seunghyun smirks. “Haven’t gotten a fat joke from you in a while.”

“I’m tired,” Seungri says, and Jiyong’s lip gloss is sticky at the corner of his mouth.

He pulls his arm free from Jiyong’s – how do they always manage to get tangled up around each other?- and adjusts his shoulder bag.

“Are you getting sick?” Manager walks up to them, her eyes narrowed in concern. “You look pale.”

“No,” Seungri says, and he accepts his room key from her with a smile. “I’m going ahead,” he says, and heads for the elevator. He gets in and presses the button for the ninth floor, and as the doors close, Jiyong slips between them.

They are alone in the elevator. “I’m no good for anyone,” Jiyong says into the space between them. “But I can’t leave you alone.”

In Seungri’s room, Jiyong unpacks his computer and rests it on Seungri’s stomach to compose, and the heat of the machine burns him through the thin material of his t-shirt. Seungri is painfully aware of the warmth of Jiyong’s forearm as it rests across his pectorals.

Seungri closes his eyes, and enjoys their closeness, even as it aches.

“Thank you for liking me,” Jiyong whispers, and Seungri doesn’t cry.

 

*

 

_”Really, I’m so thankful to Seungri for liking me so much, even though I’m always bullying him. I want to respect him more, as a man, from now on.”_ \-- G-Dragon

 

*

 

Reality starts to mix with an industry-constructed fantasy.

“They’re always playing,” Yang Hyun Suk says, as the camera follows him into their dorm in Japan. “Those two are always like this.”

Seungri wants to tell him that they aren’t. That sometimes the only sound is Jiyong’s pen scratching on paper and Seungri’s heart trying to beat out of his chest.

 

*

 

Seungri breaks the bracelet Jiyong gave him while they are on the _GO Show_. He’s laughing, and jumping around, and it falls from his wrist and it breaks.

He finds all the pieces during intermission, and tucks them into his pocket, and later, when he’s alone, he takes the pieces out and looks at them. He wants to cry.

“It’s just a bracelet,” Jiyong says, when he sees Seungri’s face. He closes Seungri’s fingers around the pieces, and smiles. “It’s not a big deal.” The pieces are cold and heavy in Seungri’s palm. It’s ‘Jiyong jewelry’, intricate and thick and masculine. It’s also Seungri jewelry, because the first time Jiyong had slipped it onto his wrist and told him it was a present, Seungri had thought it felt like a handcuff, or a collar. He’d found it comforting.

“You gave me this bracelet,” Seungri says dumbly, and his eyes are wet, maybe. He’s not sure, really, only that the bracelet is important to him. It represents things to Seungri that he can’t name aloud, and that he won’t let himself give voice to. “It’s the only thing you’ve ever given me.”

“So get it fixed,” Jiyong says, and Seungri looks down and examines the pieces.

“Not sure if it _can_ be fixed,” Seungri says, and the words stick in his throat. “You can’t fix everything you break.”

“I know,” Jiyong says, and he takes a step back. His eyes lock with Seungri’s, and his voice is like velvet, but the words cut like knives. “Have I broken you yet, maknae?”

“No,” Seungri says, and he tears his eyes away, because it’s probably a lie.

A necessary one, because Jiyong can be just like a child, and children don’t like broken toys.

 

*

 

Their last concert is in Mexico. They’re all tired and on edge, the constant plane flights driving them a little bit insane with exhaustion, and everyone is shorter-tempered than usual.

Jiyong is like a hedgehog, spikes puffing out whenever anyone tries to talk to him, so Seungri leaves well enough alone. It’s a nice respite from the feelings that wrap long slender fingers around his neck and choke him.

He spends time with Youngbae, who has no temper to speak of, and for the first two days in Mexico, Seungri thinks he’ll make it back to Korea in one piece.

When they get home, they’ll have a break. There will still be work, but it will be separately- Youngbae is working on a solo album, and GD&TOP will probably record an album. Daesung’s solo album, which is complete and ready, is finally going to get released, and he’ll have promotions. Seungri is going to MC his first show as a permanent host.

Seungri just has to keep his eyes on that. The few months apart will be good. He’ll be able to take all these raw, exposed emotions and shove them back down, and then everything will be fine again. Seungri will go on dates with fifty girls during the month of January, and learn their names and favorite colors and birthdays, and maybe the fifty-first girl will be the one he keeps seeing in February. He’ll make Youngbae spend money on useless things so he doesn’t sit at home alone in his free time, and Seungri will recover. He’ll get _over it_ , so when BIGBANG is all together again… When it’s time to record a new album, Seungri will be better. He’ll have convinced himself, all over again, that he is strong, and that he’s fine.

He won’t want to demand that Jiyong look at him. He won’t feel Jiyong coming into his space and want to drag him closer. He won’t want to tell Jiyong he loves him, really loves him, like _that_ , and that he wants him to fall in love with Seungri this time. That he wants him to stop dating all these girls and look at what’s right here in front of him. He won’t keep remembering the one night Jiyong had kissed him, touched him, took him: the one they never talk about, because it never should have happened.

Seungri will stop feeling like the branch destined to fall. Seungri will have survived the winter.

Just three more days, Seungri thinks.

“Seungri.” Youngbae’s eyes are sympathetic. “Are you going to be okay?”

“Eventually,” Seungri says, and Youngbae sighs.

“You’re strong, maknae.”

“Not as strong as everyone seems to think.” Seungri admires the city below them, tan streets laid out like a maze. Youngbae takes another sip of his bottled water. Seungri’s drinking tequila.

“Stronger,” Youngbae says, and claps Seungri on the shoulder. “He’s my best friend, so I know this better than anyone…”

“Know what?” Seungri asks.

“He likes you better than he likes anyone else. For what it’s worth, you really are his favorite.”

“For what it’s worth,” Seungri echoes, and he finishes his drink in one shot.

 

*

 

_That time_ , the one they don’t talk about, the one they both pretend they don’t remember, finishes with Seungri’s aching thighs, Jiyong spent and heavy on his chest.

“Do you know why I like you best, maknae?” Jiyong pants, and Seungri whines a no, shifting uncomfortably, trying to relieve the stress in his thighs and the slight soreness in his lower body. “Because you’ve seen the worst of me.”

Seungri exhales, and when he breathes in again, the air smells like sweat and sex and like Jiyong’s shampoo, girls’ shampoo that he makes their manager-noona buy for him when she gets the groceries.

“You’ve seen the ugliest parts of me and you’re still here, looking at me like I hang the moon every night. Looking at me like I’m amazing.”

“You _are_ amazing,” Seungri whispers helplessly, and Jiyong nuzzles his nose into Seungri’s hair, sliding off to the side, and the cold air hits Seungri all at once. With it comes reality.

“If I were you, and you were me,” Jiyong says, “I wouldn’t keep coming back.”

“I’m not you,” Seungri replies, and Jiyong laughs, etching words into Seungri’s sticky belly with his index finger, his nail tickling the hair there.

“Maknae, do you love me?” Jiyong asks, and Seungri doesn’t answer. He just closes his eyes and tries to understand the words that Jiyong draws on his skin.

도망가지 마라, 피하지 마라.

_Don’t run away from me, don’t escape._

Seungri couldn’t even if he tried.

Seungri is the branch that shakes in the wind, hanging on barely to a tree much stronger than he’ll ever be.

Seungri starts to wonder if Jiyong will be the end of him.

 

*

 

Seunghyun finds them at nightfall. “We’re going out,” he announces. “Blowing off steam.”

“Sweet,” Youngbae says, in English, and Seungri laughs.

“No pole dancing,” he says, and Youngbae snaps his fingers like he’s put out.

“You’re right,” he says. “The ladies might hurt themselves trying to get at me.”

“You’ve been watching too many Usher music videos,” Daesung says, peeking his head around Seunghyun’s body in the doorway. “Change your clothes, before Jiyong-hyung gets impatient.”

Seungri grins, feeling cautiously optimistic. He loves people, and going out sounds like a fun way to hang out with new ones. They’re in a pretty touristy area of Mexico City, so he’s not really worried about sticking out. “Are you sure noona won’t kill us?”

“What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her,” Seunghyun says, wiggling his brows, and Daesung rolls his eyes.

“Jiyong-hyung and I already asked. She said it’s fine as long as we come back before daybreak and don’t bring any stranger girls with us.”

“Sounds fair,” Youngbae says, and he’s already touching his hair thoughtfully, obviously trying to decide between fixing it and a hat.

The streets are noisy, and Seungri loves it. He hasn’t felt so in-his-element in days, and his eyes are already scouting places that look interesting to remember for later. Everything is alive despite the hour.

They end up at a salsa bar, and Seunghyun is delighted at not being the only one who doesn’t know this dance. Seungri just enjoys the music, ordering another tequila sunrise and moving his head to the music. Jiyong, who is sitting across from him, is drinking two drinks to Seungri’s every one, slowly sipping and watching the bar with dark eyes. A girl with dark hair approaches the table, and smiles at Seungri.

“Would you like to dance?” she asks, in clear English, and Seungri smiles at her.

“Yes,” he says. “But I don’t know how.” He pronounces the words loudly and carefully, and she smiles, and offers him her hand. He takes it, and she pulls him up and into the crowd.

The steps are easy enough, and Seungri catches on quickly, swirling her around and smiling shyly when she comes in closer. The song slows down, and he drops his hands to her hips, enjoying the way they sway beneath his palms. He can feel the drinks now, making his thoughts less clear, and she’s so pretty… her lips are a perfect bow. They remind him of Jiyong’s.

“You’re handsome,” she says. “And you dance well.”

“Thank you,” he says, and she drags him deeper into the crowd, and Seungri just moves with the music, forgetting, for a while, all the stress.

“Can I cut in?” says a familiar voice in unaccented English, and Seungri blinks, the spell broken. Jiyong stands in front of him, and Seungri’s hands fall from his dance partner’s waist.

Seungri expects Jiyong to dance with her, but it’s Seungri he claims, dragging Seungri back into the press of bodies. And of course Jiyong’s picked up salsa by watching, because Jiyong’s good at everything, and Seungri isn’t surprised by much anymore.

Jiyong’s breath smells like tequila too, and like pomegranates, and like the salt around the edge of his margarita glass, and Seungri can feel it on his cheeks and against his eyelashes as Jiyong looks up at him.

“Since when are you taller than me?” Jiyong slurs, and he’s drunk, but so is Seungri, so maybe this is okay.

“I have been for a while,” Seungri replies.

Jiyong dances against him with a fierceness, like he’s trying to mold them into one person, and Seungri keeps wondering if the others can see them. He hopes they can’t because Seungri shouldn’t be doing this, and Jiyong shouldn’t be doing this, and it’s not just because they’re in public, but it’s also because they’re Seungri and Jiyong, and it shouldn’t be so electric between them.

And yet, when Jiyong pulls him free from the crowd, and back out onto the street, sending a short text at Seunghyun ( _maknae is drunk so i’m taking him home_ ), Seungri doesn’t fight him. Seungri just follows Jiyong’s lead, because Seungri doesn’t know how to say no, and he’s too drunk to want to.

The walk back to the hotel seems interminable, and the cool air wakes Seungri up, clears his head a little but not enough, and Jiyong seems to be looking at him more clearly too.

“Maknae,” he whispers, and the sound trickles down Seungri’s spine like honey, and Seungri takes his hand again and lets Jiyong pull him into the elevator.

Seungri’s room is closer, and Jiyong peels Seungri out of layer after layer with slow reverence, hands as steady as his eyes.

“How far will you let me push you?” Jiyong asks, and Seungri half sits, half trips onto the bed, Jiyong trailing after him with his mouth.

“As far as you want to,” Seungri admits. “I’m already broken.” There’s a hint of apology in his words. And then Jiyong kisses him, for the first time since _that time_ , the one they never talk about that Seungri can never seem to forget. Like _that time_ , Jiyong is relentless, his mouth claiming Seungri’s so thoroughly that Seungri wonders if, when the kiss ends, he’ll remember how to breathe on his own.

Maybe he won’t, and Jiyong will have to come back in and kiss him again.

“I don’t know why you think I don’t like broken things,” Jiyong says, and he slides his hand across the planes of Seungri’s chest, fingers lingering on dimples in the skin, along trails of hair and gooseflesh. Seungri can only lick his lips and let him. “I love broken things.”

Seungri’s head is foggy, the tequila making everything seem surreal. Jiyong seems to be moving in slow motion, but everything about him, in contrast, is crystal clear.

“Why?” Seungri asks, and he shudders as Jiyong finds the bones of his pelvis, dragging torturously slow across the space between them, below his navel. It’s like Seungri is on fire, and there’s no water; no relief from the burn Jiyong starts with his eyes and fans with his fingers, and Seungri is terrified one day he’ll just turn to ash and Jiyong will just watch.

“Because broken things can be beautiful,” Jiyong whispers against the skin of Seungri’s neck, and Seungri can feel Jiyong’s thin frame pressing against him, clinging to him, sweat-slick and hard and demanding. “I’m not religious.”

“I know,” Seungri says, and his voice cracks along the words, just two of them, that feel like they take everything Seungri has left to utter. Jiyong’s hand slips down to Seungri’s thigh, hand broad and flat along the muscle.

“But when I look at a church, sun coming in through those stained-glass windows, the light now a colored, fractured pattern along the floors and on my face, reds and blues and all the others pressing in on my eyelids… I think to myself _this is beauty. This broken glass is beautiful._ ”

“That’s not broken glass,” Seungri says, and his tongue, made thick and unwieldy with liquor, can barely form the words. Jiyong stills, before he rolls so he’s on top of Seungri, hot chest pressing against Seungri’s own, arms on either side of Seungri’s torso to support his waist. He looks down at Seungri with half-lidded eyes. There’s a shadow of makeup on the lids, glitter and liner nothing but a smudge. “It’s art. That glass has been carved into those shapes and pieced back together to make something new.”

“You’re my art,” Jiyong says. “I’ve carved you up with my own two hands.”

And then he kisses Seungri again; he kisses the life out of him, stealing all of his air and all of his sanity and all of his dreams, swallowing them whole and filling Seungri with a whole new kind of emptiness when he pulls away again.

_When will you put me back together?_ Seungri wants to ask, but he doesn’t, because when it’s just the two of them, Seungri isn’t loud. Seungri, like this, has nothing left to hide, because Jiyong knows it all, every single fractured piece. He’s cut Seungri into tiny parts with jagged edges, and Seungri’s lost a few along the way, maybe enough that he’ll never be something like whole ever again.

Seungri can feel his heart even through the numbness induced by tequila. His brain is working slowly, but not slowly enough.

Seungri never says no.

“You make me want to write,” Jiyong says, whispers, _chants_ against his chest. “You make me want to create music.”

And he holds Seungri’s heart in his hand and squeezes, and Seungri lets him. Maybe, now, Seungri likes it, because Jiyong’s been holding his heart so long Seungri forgets what it feels like when it’s beating free.

*

Sometimes, Jiyong is so consumed by music that he forgets about consequences. Direct follow-throughs and results. It makes him seem arrogant in a different way than Seungri is perceived. Really, though, Jiyong is just impractical and whimsical, and unpredictable, and leaves everyone scrambling in his wake.

Chaos.

Seungri is the opposite. Seungri is the exact opposite, because Seungri likes everything in the correct box. Seungri knows their schedules two months in advance, and makes backhand deals with Japanese businessmen for endorsement contracts, and keeps his CDs alphabetized by language and artist. Seungri knows where to get the best property for your money, and when to ask for extra service at the restaurant because he’s a frequent customer. Seungri knows that you have to wash your whites separately from your darks, and that you can’t wash your reds with either of them if they’re brand new.

Seungri knows that once is an accident and twice is a pattern. Seungri knows he’s not going to be able to forget, this time, and that the more he doesn’t talk about it, the more it’s going to eat him from the inside. He knows that the more he pretends, the more rotted the wood will become, and Seungri will turn black and wither and fall.

Jiyong sweeps in like a tornado, scattering Seungri’s sanity like so much dust, and destroying the carefully built protections Seungri had installed around his heart. Jiyong is like a wrecking ball, and Seungri is made of glass.

Jiyong, Seungri thinks, has always been destined to ruin him.

Seungri starts to believe that it was inevitable, really.

 

*

 

Morning brings with it a pounding headache. Seungri opens his eyes and the light is terrible. His mouth feels like it’s filled with cotton. He rolls over on his side, crushing his eyes closed, to curl away from the open window, and his body is sore, aching in bizarre ways.

Memories come back to him slowly. Salsa. A beautiful girl. Jiyong.

_Jiyong._

Seungri opens his eyes, and Jiyong is sleeping, one hand on his stomach, fingers splayed, and one arm curled above his head. The ink of his tattoos looks dark against his pale skin, and _MIND CONTROL_ looks more angry than usual, raised along his side like a warning.

Seungri is going to be sick.

Seungri crawls out of bed, swallowing when he sees last night’s clothes decorating the ground. Jiyong’s silky black underwear. Seungri’s simple cotton white.

The tile of the shower wall is cool against his back, and Seungri turns the water as high as it will go, so hot it’s scalding. He lets it beat down on him as he sinks down to the floor of the tub. The water burns at his legs, and he rests his head against his knees.

His stomach is rolling, with his hangover and with a general sense of wrongness that feels like it’s swallowing him alive.

When Seungri gets out of the shower, red as a lobster and prepared to face… Whatever it is he has to face, Jiyong is gone. His clothes are gone, and the covers, where he’d slept, are hastily pushed aside, clumped in the middle of the queen-sized bed.

Jiyong’s forgotten his phone. It’s sitting on the bedside table, blinking repeatedly, notifying its owner of a text message.

In Jiyong’s absence, Seungri supposes there’s an answer.

 

*

 

_“When I wanted to give up half way, I reminded myself to be strong. Besides telling myself to stay strong, there was nothing more I could do.”_ \-- Seungri

 

*

 

It was easier, when Seungri could deny his feelings. Before Seungri woke up on that Tuesday morning, twenty minutes past his alarm, and the light streamed in from outside and illuminated his bleeding heart.

Before that, Seungri could feel the emotions creeping up and wrapping themselves around him, and he could shove them off, shove them down, send them away with a little more denial and a lot more practicality.

But in that moment, when Seungri had let his guard down, the truth had snuck up on him and grabbed a-hold of him, sinking its barbed fingers into Seungri’s chest and doing all the damage it could.

And Seungri, when he’d first met Kwon Jiyong, had wanted… Lee Seunghyun wanted to be a branch strong enough to support Kwon Jiyong’s weight. A branch strong enough to climb.

Now, Seungri is suffused in emotions that have a name; emotions that have made a home for themselves inside of Seungri’s chest, filling him from head to toe with things he isn’t supposed to feel, and there isn’t enough air, Seungri thinks.

He’s dizzy with it, and whereas before, Seungri could close his eyes and wish the feelings away, now, all Seungri can do is suffer through him, and know that whatever he is to Kwon Jiyong, it’s not what Seungri wants to be.

Seungri is Jiyong’s only constant muse.

Seungri is not Jiyong’s love. Seungri is not Jiyong’s heart.

Jiyong had warned him, Seungri thinks bitterly, not to demand too much of him.

It starts to feel like that might be impossible.

 

*

 

“I thought Jiyong brought you home last night,” Seunghyun says at breakfast, and Seungri looks up blearily.

“Yeah?” Seungri says, before he remembers not to be too informal, lest it end up a variety show topic later on. “Yes, he did.”

“Then why do you look like you were attacked by a vampire?” Seunghyun reaches forward and taps his index and second finger against Seungri’s neck. Seungri jerks away and adjusts the collar of his shirt.

Seungri considers lying, but he’s never been too good at it. “That’s why Jiyong brought me home.” Not a lie. Not the whole truth.

“Are you alright?” Youngbae takes a huge bite of cereal, and it makes Seungri’s stomach flop dangerously. The thought of food makes him nauseous.

“Too much to drink,” Seungri says. Another half-truth. Jiyong’s the real expert at those. Maybe Jiyong has given him something after all.

Jiyong appears halfway through breakfast, dressed in comfortable clothes and wearing sunglasses inside. “Jiyong-hyung, even TOP-hyung beat you,” Daesung says cheerfully, and Jiyong’s mouth quirks in a tiny smile. He doesn’t even glance in Seungri’s direction.

“I think I’m done,” Seungri says, standing from the table. “See you guys for stage-rehearsal in an hour.” He pulls Jiyong’s phone out of his pocket and sets it carefully on the table, and it’s Seungri’s way of making sure Jiyong doesn’t have an excuse to come see him. Not that he would.

It’s just two more days, Seungri thinks. Nothing impossible.

Two days.

Seungri is a branch that shakes and shakes in the wind.

 

 

*

  
I gave you everything I had  
The only thing left for me is you  
Don’t stay away from me anymore

\--Seungri, _What Can I Do?_

*

 

 

Jiyong curls a frizzy piece of Seungri’s hair around his finger. “It’s totally fried,” he says, and Seungri laughs, poking at a blond curl.

“You’re one to talk,” Seungri replies, licking his lips.

“Shut up, maknae.” Jiyong’s smiling though, the uncomplicated smile he saves for when he’s almost completely relaxed. “It’s stylistically fried, stupid.” He stabs a finger into Seungri’s cheek, and Seungri laughs. “I don’t know why I bother with you.”

“You love me,” Seungri says, and Jiyong’s smile turns a little wry. His eyebrows, peeking dark through his hair, draw together.

“No.” Jiyong clears his throat, then takes his thumb and smoothes it across Seungri’s forehead. “The things I love, I lose,” Jiyong says. “I’m going to keep you.” The sudden tension is strange, and Seungri’s not sure what to make of it.

“It’s okay, Tom,” Seungri says, and it breaks the mood. Jiyong chuckles, a low sound that vibrates across Seungri’s ribs. “Jerry isn’t going anywhere.”

“Good,” Jiyong says, and Seungri starts to ache.

 

*

 

When Seungri gets off the plane in South Korea, at Gimpo airport, it’s like he’s survived an odyssey. The last two days of the tour were like torture, Seungri’s heart tied at four corners and pulled by horses.

Jiyong had seemed content to pretend nothing had happened, just like before, but Seungri couldn’t do it. He’d never missed the choreography so profoundly before. He’d never been so completely out of sync.

On stage, BIGBANG was BIGBANG, and Seungri hit all his queues, but off-stage, he’d stumbled through social interactions in a way that had been painfully obvious. Just counting the minutes until they were back on the plane.

Seungri’d sat in a window seat, and Daesung, with no words exchanged, had sat on his left.

When Seungri drops his bags in his dorm, the one he now lives in alone, it’s with a profound sigh of relief.

Still, he can’t help but remember the way Jiyong had looked over his sunglasses, eyes trained on Seungri as Seungri gave his best effort not to look back.

He hadn’t quite managed. The wood of Seungri’s branch is rotting from inside.

 

> _“Seungri,” Jiyong had said, as Seungri had hailed his own taxi and told the manager he had plans and he was in a hurry. “Seungri, look at me.”_
> 
> _“I can’t,” Seungri had replied. “It hurts too much.”_

*

 

“I don’t know what it is about you that’s so…”

“So what?” Seungri asks, and when he looks up, Jiyong is looking at him with wide eyes, leaning back in his chair. Seungri is sitting on the arm of the sofa. It’s just them in the studio. Jiyong is mixing a project and he’d made Seungri come with him.

Jiyong licks his lips, and if Seungri didn’t know any better, he’d think Jiyong was afraid.

“Inspiring for me,” Jiyong says, and Seungri starts to wonder about the shadows in Jiyong’s gaze.

 

*

 

In university, Seungri learns three things about himself.

One. Seungri is really good at making friends. Seungri’d always thought that maybe it was because he was the least busy of the members, that he had more friends, but in reality it’s that he’s the only one with social skills.

Two. Seungri can make people feel comfortable with him after only a short time. He finds that out when a girl he’s just met spends a few hours after dinner one day spilling her life story, while her boyfriend smiles cheerfully and invites Seungri out to play billiards with them later in the week, not remotely jealous because he’s charmed too.

Three. That neither of the first two things matter all that much in the long run, because for all his friends, and all the stories he learns, and all the phone numbers he collects, what he likes to do most is come home and lie on Jiyong’s bed, while Jiyong pets his hair or his back, and tests out rap lyrics in the from underneath his Tom&Laura comforter.

Seungri starts to accept that maybe this is something more.

 

*

 

He meets Dara at a samgyeopsal restaurant. She takes one look at his face and frowns.

“What did Jiyong do now?” Dara marks off three sojus on the order form, and enough meat to feed five people.

“Are you expecting someone else?” Seungri jokes, and Dara levels a glare at him.

“No, but I’m hungry, and I need to be drunk to listen to your romantic woes,” she jokes. “And you probably need to be drunk to tell me about them.”

“I don’t have romantic woes.”

“Okay,” Dara says. “Your really-close-and-touchy-feely-friendship-that-has-never-been-consummated woes, then.” She sighs dramatically. “Plus, something about Jiyong’s ‘artistic melancholy’ drives me to drink.”

Seungri laughs, loudly, maybe for the first time in days, and it’s a rusty sound. Dara raises an eyebrow, and smiles. “Tell noona all about it, dearest.”

She makes Seungri grill the meat, because Seungri _”doesn’t know any important life skills”_ and she and Seungri are a through a bottle and a half of soju before Dara leans forward on her hands and sighs.

“So, what happened?”

“Is this a no judgment zone?”

“Seungri,” Dara says, cradling her flushed face between perfectly manicured fingers. “Thanks to Jiyong, half of Korea knows you tried to watch porn on your manager’s computer. And didn’t even manage to download the whole video. Really, what’s left to judge you for?”

“I’m in love with hyung,” Seungri says, and then quickly shoves a piece of pork belly into his mouth. It’s too hot, and he yelps, and Dara laughs.

“I thought you said it wasn’t _romantic_ woes?” Dara says, pouring them both another shot. “Tell me something new.”

Seungri licks his lips and blinks twice to clear his vision. The alcohol, as Dara had expected, has made Seungri mellow. Less afraid to talk about it.

“It’s not romance,” Seungri replies. And he taps his fingers on the edge of the table, before picking up his spoon and taking a bite of budaejigae. The tofu is rich, and just a little salty. Jiyong never eats the tofu; he eats around it, and leaves it all for Seungri. “But not so much on the unconsummated, either.”

“Oh my god,” Dara says, dropping her chopsticks to drink straight from the bottle. “What _happened_ , kid?”

“I’m so dumb,” Seungri says. “I’m so, so stupid.”

Dara stands up and walks around to the other side of the table, sitting next to Seungri on the bench. She wraps an arm around his waist, and leans her head on his shoulder. “We’re all a little bit stupid when we’re in love,” Dara says.

“You can’t tell anyone,” Seungri says. “I need to get over it.”

“Well,” Dara says, reaching across the table to retrieve her bottle of soju, “doesn’t that mean he likes you back?”

Seungri looks at Dara incredulously. “Do you think I’d be this miserable if he did?”

“I guess not,” Dara says. “I thought you were too practical for this, Seungri.”

“I let my guard down,” Seungri says, and his fingers trace the wood grain of the table. His bracelet clinks like a terrible reminder. “Just for a moment. And it’s always been there.”

“You’ll be okay, kid,” Dara says, and she puts the last slab of pork belly onto the grill. “I’ll cut the meat for this one.” She scratches his back comfortingly. “Just this once.”

 

*

 

  
My broken heart is like an ocean wave  
My shaken heart like the blowing wind  
My heart vanished into nothing like smoke  
The pain is irremovable like a tattoo

\--BIGBANG, _Haru Haru_  


 

*

 

Seungri remembers the way it felt, the first time he woke up with Jiyong asleep beside him.

Jiyong slept with his mouth parted, and the faint beginnings of stubble had appeared above his upper lip and along his cheeks; just enough that Seungri would feel it, if he were to touch.

Seungri wanted to touch. Seungri wanted it all, but he settled for brushing a strand of Jiyong’s hair from his face. Jiyong had reacted, just a little, wrinkling his forehead and releasing a tiny sigh, and Seungri had felt like bursting.

Instead, he’d pulled Jiyong’s notebook from his arms and closed it, setting it beside him, and then pulled a thin sheet over his slightly shivering body. He’d done that and then he’d gone back to sleep.

Looking back on it now, Seungri should have known.

Looking back on it now, Seungri thinks it was another start.

 

*

 

_I miss you, maknae_ is all the text says, and it shouldn’t make Seungri’s heart stop, but it does.

Jiyong has a way of doing that without even trying.

_i miss you, too_ Seungri writes back, because he does, and Seungri is a terrible liar. _but it doesn’t change anything, does it?_

Jiyong doesn’t answer, and Seungri pours himself a drink.

 

*

 

Haerim is an accident.

Not a bad one, but an unexpected one. Seungri meets her when he and Youngbae go to a night club on a Wednesday night, just to catch up and enjoy the atmosphere of a noisy party. Se7en and Hanbyul come too, and Seungri is relaxed and comfortable, and his stomach has stopped twisting for the first time in weeks.

Haerim is a friend of Hanbyul’s, a costume designer from a drama Hanbyul had worked on forever ago, and she’s just so interesting. Her mom is a real estate agent, too, and Seungri delights in her practicality; the way she lets him be the center of attention and doesn’t waste time with her words, speaking straightforwardly. She doesn’t baby him either, and that’s new, because Seungri is used to girls telling him how cute he is and treating him like he’s a child.

Seungri’s not a child, even if it feels like show-business is trying to make him stay one forever.

When Haerim invites him to dance, Seungri takes her up on the offer, and when she asks him if he’d like to get coffee later in the week, he takes her up on that offer too.

_”I like to plan ahead,”_ she says, and so does Seungri, so they both pull out their hand-phones and check their perfectly organized calendar apps and decide on a date and time, and Seungri is sure that she’ll be five minutes early.

She is, and she’s wearing a perfectly normal dress, and she looks pretty, and Seungri offers her his arm and she hesitantly takes it.

She doesn’t put sugar in her coffee, and she’s not wearing any lip gloss, and her hair is pulled back in a simple ponytail.

“So tell me about your day,” she prompts, and Seungri talks about his mother and about how he’d tripped and fallen while practicing, and Haerim listens before easily responding, with no metaphor or ambiguity in her speech.

She has her whole attention on him, but it doesn’t scare him, or make him uncomfortable. It doesn’t feel like her eyes are taking him apart and finding him lacking. It doesn’t feel challenging at all.

She’s nothing like Jiyong, and Seungri figures that means he might finally be doing something right.

> _“Someone like me will tear you apart.”_

He asks her to be his girlfriend on their third date, and she accepts with a smile. You can’t see Haerim’s gums when she smiles; just her white teeth and her full lips, and she’s so pretty.

“She’s nice,” Seunghyun says. “Hanbyul’s friend, right?”

“Yes,” Seungri says. “And she is. Nice, I mean.”

“Good for you,” Seunghyun says. “I’ve been worried about you.”

“Worried?” Seungri asks, and Seunghyun raises an eyebrow.

“Worried you were going to keep letting him push you around forever,” Seunghyun says, and Seungri laughs, a dry, harsh sound that reminds him of crackling leaves in the fall.

“No one is that strong,” Seungri replies, and Seunghyun chuckles.

“Well, if anyone could have managed it,” Seunghyun adjusts his hat and sunglasses while gazing at himself in the mirror, “it would have been you, maknae.”

“I don’t know about that,” Seungri says, and Seunghyun gives him a secretive smile.

“I almost thought he didn’t want to push you anymore.”

 

*

 

“Nyongtory,” Jiyong says, laughing. “Nyongtory~”

“It’s really cute, right?” Seungri pokes at the sign, lost in the shuffle by a fan at the recording. The hangeul letters are in red and yellow and blue, and they’re large and bubbled. “I’ve heard it before, but I didn’t know it was a thing.”

“Of course it’s a thing,” Jiyong says. “Our fans can see how precious you are to me.”

“They’re going to get the wrong idea.” Seungri flushes, and looks at his shoes, and Jiyong wraps an arm around his waist.

“So?” Jiyong says, and Seungri swallows.

_I’m going to get the wrong idea_ , Seungri wants to say, and he starts to ignore the way his heart is growing wings.

 

*

 

And time passes.

“I haven’t seen you in a week or two,” Seungri says, and Daesung’s laugh is rich, even over the phone, where everyone else’s voice loses a bit of depth. “Let’s get lunch.”

“I don’t feel like disguises today,” Daesung replies. “But if you come over, we can order take-out and watch episodes of _Kamen Rider_ to practice our Japanese.”

“Sounds perfect,” Seungri says.

It’s fun to see Daesung again. The one thing Seungri has always noticed about his bandmates is how much he misses them when they aren’t on top of each other, breathing the same air for months at a time.

They use Daesung’s phone to call for jjajangmyun, because Seungri’s forgotten his at home, and then they prank call Seunghyun and Seungri tells Daesung about his new girlfriend. Daesung smiles at him kindly and asks if Seungri is feeling better now.

“Yeah,” Seungri says, and it’s mostly true. It’s more that he just tries not to think about Jiyong at all, because thinking about Jiyong brings back that moment when Seungri walked out of the bathroom and Jiyong had already disappeared, leaving behind only his imprint in the sheets and his misplaced phone.

Seungri doesn’t want to think about that moment. Seungri doesn’t want to be in love with Jiyong anymore.

Seungri leaves when Daesung starts to nod off, excusing himself and making the short walk back to his own place.

He sets his flat keys on the hall table. There is an extra pair of shoes in the foyer. They’re covered in metal studs.

Jiyong is in his room.

“Hyung? Seungri says, pasting a smile on his face to cover his surprise, and waiting in the doorway. “Did you call? I left my phone here-“

It’s been three weeks and six days since Jiyong’s last text. Not that Seungri has been counting. Not that Seungri hasn’t been wishing and wondering if Jiyong would appear and take the decision out Seungri’s hands, the way he’s always done before.

“Who is she?” Jiyong says, holding up Seungri’s phone.

“That’s my phone.”

“I’m leader,” Jiyong says. “I have to pay attention to your texts.” Jiyong glares down at Seungri’s phone. “You have lots of texts from her.”

“She’s a girl I like. We don’t have a dating ban,” Seungri says flatly, and Jiyong raises his eyebrow.

“You like her?” Jiyong says, and it’s low, almost a purr. Then Jiyong is walking closer, and Seungri tenses, because Jiyong is walking like he has a purpose. He rests his hands on Seungri’s hips and presses a soft kiss to the side of Seungri’s throat that makes Seungri pulse quicken. “How much?” His lips leave a brand like a burn there as he speaks, and Seungri can feel each word on his skin, Jiyong’s breath warm in the cool room.

It hurts, and it hurts far too much for Seungri to stand. Seungri can’t breathe, he can’t sleep, he can’t eat, because everything is Jiyong and everything hurts. Seungri wants to pull Jiyong closer, and pull Jiyong inside of him, but he can’t, and maybe that’s what hurts the most.

“A lot,” Seungri says. “I like her a lot.” He takes a step back, backing out of Jiyong’s embrace. “Stop it, please.”

“Why?” Jiyong asks, tilting his head to the side, looking at Seungri through narrowed eyes.

“Because I don’t…” Seungri sighs, and his hands are trembling. He shoves them into his pockets, and trains his eyes on the floor. “I think she likes me too. Likes _me_. Not just what she can take from me. Not just how much I can put up with.”

“She’ll never understand you,” Jiyong says, and Seungri peeks up and Jiyong’s eyes are hard like diamonds. “No one can understand us.”

“We could understand each other,” Seungri says. “If we wanted to.” _If you’d let me._ It’s too cold, in the room, and Seungri wants to fidget, but he’s afraid then Jiyong will know that he’s barely holding himself together. “I like her, Jiyong.”

“You like her.” It’s flat. “What does that mean?” Seungri takes another step back, and the room feels even colder. “What are you trying to say?”

“This is my room,” Seungri says boldly. “Not yours.” There’s a ringing in his ears, and Jiyong’s still got his cell-phone, and Jiyong’s face is unreadable, and Seungri looks back down at the ground. He feels wrung out, and a little bit like he’s teetering on the edge of insanity.

The world moves in slow motion. “Maknae?” Jiyong asks, and now his voice is strange, almost hesitating.

“I’m a person,” Seungri says, and his voice cracks and shatters, and his eyes feel wet. Forever the baby, Seungri thinks, as he frees his right hand from his pocket and rubs it across his eyes. “Not a stained glass window. Not a broken toy.” Seungri chokes on the rest of the words. “I like her, and she likes me, and it would be nice if…”

“If what?” Jiyong says, and now there’s a slight waver in Jiyong’s voice, but Seungri thinks it might be his imagination. He’s shivering, and it’s not because the room is cold. It’s because Seungri is afraid, and because Seungri is weak, and because Seungri, more than anything, wants to be strong.

“It would be nice to feel…” Seungri looks up, and Jiyong’s eyes are wide but his mouth is set in a firm, straight line. “I don’t want to feel like this anymore, hyung.” Seungri lets out a quavering breath. “I won’t demand anything from you. But I’m not strong enough.”

“Right,” Jiyong says, “Because you love me.” Jiyong’s tone is strange.

“No,” Seungri says. “Because you don’t love _me_.” Jiyong wraps his arms around himself, and Seungri watches him throw Seungri’s phone on the bed. “You’re so selfish.”

“Didn’t I tell you that I was?” He leaves without another word.

Seungri hears the front door close.

And then Seungri is alone in his room, and the floor is like ice beneath his feet, and his chest is even colder. Seungri climbs into bed, and even though his sheets are clean, fresh from the wash, they somehow still smell like Jiyong, and Seungri will never be free.

Seungri cries, because Seungri is a wayward branch waiting for his turn to fall.

Seungri isn’t going to get over Jiyong.

It’s a hard truth.

 

*

 

_“Maybe a lot of people think I am always full of confidence but in reality, this isn’t entirely true. I have a fragile heart… very fragile. I don’t like showing my weakness to others so I just practice and practice and act confident. Toward my [confident] self, I am sometimes still bothered when other members say, ‘Why are you so proud?’”_ – Seungri, October 2010

 

*

 

Seungri knows exactly the way Jiyong walks, and the slant of his eyes, and the curve of his neck where it meets his shoulder. He knows it better than he knows anything about himself. Seungri looks for those things in strangers; in random people on the street and in people in magazines and everywhere he goes, and tells himself those things aren’t special. It’s the kind of lie that it’s impossible for Seungri to tell himself, because even when he manages to find someone who bites their lower lip like Jiyong, he imagines the way Jiyong tastes, the way Jiyong once leaned forward and caught Seungri’s lip just like that, hard enough the Seungri knew he was being claimed. Seungri remembers, without effort, the way the curve of his nose fits into the hollow of Jiyong’s shoulder, and the way Jiyong smells of eucalyptus and expensive cologne.

Seungri tries to forget the way Jiyong makes him feel alive in ways he’s never felt before, because despite all those snatches, sometimes Jiyong sucks the life out Seungri, leaving him so cold and empty he’s not sure he can even recall what it means to feel whole. Seungri tries to forget what it means to be so aching and broken and pasted haphazardly back together with parts in all the wrong places. Seungri tries to forget because it’s too much. Seungri’s somehow lost himself in Jiyong’s art, or to Jiyong’s art, and he’s a well worn page near the front of Jiyong’s notebook that Jiyong revisits and then discards all over again.

Being in love with Jiyong is like being on a rollercoaster with no end, and those moments of triumph at the top are so exhilarating that the valleys don’t seem so terrible. Seungri is an adrenaline junkie, and he can’t get enough.

But Seungri can’t go on like this. BIGBANG can’t go on like this, making due with the tiny bits of Seungri that will show up for rehearsal when they should have the whole thing, Daesung’s worried looks and Youngbae’s warm, protective arm thrown across his shoulder as Seungri tries to gather up the pieces.

Seungri’s tired, and it’s not enough, anymore, to be the thing Jiyong needs to create, because Jiyong’s way of creating destroys everything else, and Seungri’s only a shell of himself and people are beginning to notice. Seungri’s mask is slipping, and it hurts more now than it heals.

Seungri tries to forget how Jiyong reaches out and asks for everything, with greedy hands and greedy eyes, and Seungri tries to forget just how easily he gives it to him, falling to the spell of Jiyong’s soft voice and Jiyong’s intense, captivating eyes.

Seungri tries to forget the way his heart leaps when Jiyong doesn’t remember to be afraid and he just laughs, unfettered and beautiful, and the way sometimes, when he thinks Seungri is asleep, Jiyong runs his fingers, bedecked in his wide silver rings, across the planes of Seungri’s chest, reverently, like Seungri is something special.

Seungri tries to forget the way his name sounds on Jiyong’s lips, when Jiyong sits next to him, with no make-up and sweatpants and his hair messily pushed back from his forehead with an elastic band, and a sleepy smile in his eyes.

Seungri tries and tries, but in the end, it’s all just remembering, and Seungri’s bleeding, bleeding, and he’s not sure there’s anything that can fix him.

 

> _“Seungri,” Jiyong says. “Come here.” And Seungri goes, letting Jiyong hug him from behind and kiss the nape of his neck. “You know you’re my favorite, right?” Jiyong’s thick bracelet, the one that matches his own, digs into his sternum._
> 
> _“Yeah,” Seungri says, and wonders what that even means, when Jiyong is always falling in love with someone else._

 

Seungri starts to give up.

 

*

 

“It’s not going to work out,” Seungri tells Haerim, and she takes it well. She says all the right things, and smiles just the way Seungri likes, and she wants to still be friends, and Seungri gratefully tells her he wants that too, and Seungri doesn’t see a trace of tears in her eyes.

It’s better this way, for her. Seungri’s heart, after all, is full of holes that bleed with every beat, and it isn’t much to offer her.

Seungri doesn’t hear from Jiyong.

The silence between them is profound.

Jiyong doesn’t text, or call, or try and contact Seungri at all, and Seungri throws himself into MC-ing, and into writing his own music for a new solo mini-album. He goes out to see movies with former classmates, and convinces Youngbae to waste tons of money at COEX mall, where they walk around in perfect disguises and no one ever recognizes them.

Seunghyun tries to invite Seungri out with himself and Jiyong a few times, but Seungri finds clever ways to turn him down, and ends up accompanying Dara and Bom more often than not, to whatever clubs they sneak out to go to, and while Seungri dances to trashy techno beats he’s not thinking about how Jiyong must look at the same moment, leaning against the wall in a hip hop club with his lips wrapped around a cigarette and a vodka drink in hand.

It’s the sort of escape that Seungri has always been good at. The kind bostered by denial.

Seungri just wonders how long he can keep it up. BIGBANG will be back in the studio in two months. Hopefully, Seungri thinks, the wound will have scabbed over by then, and seeing Jiyong’s face won’t make him want to simultaneously push him away and pull him closer.

Two months will be enough time. If not, Seungri will grit his teeth, and then he’ll go into the military, and hope two _years_ will be enough time.

 

*

 

The way Seungri writes music is boring. He sits down at his computer and types words. Then he thinks about them, and erases them, and starts all over again. He writes and produces his first mini-album in one week, and it’s good. He’s proud of it. But the way Seungri writes isn’t soul-searching or revelatory.

In comparison to the way Jiyong shifts and spills over with ideas and songs and poetry that resonate, Seungri seems more like a salary-man than an artist.

 

> _“What are you doing?” Seungri asks, and Jiyong grins and plunges Seungri’s hands into the paint. It’s dark green, and it gets all over Seungri’s shirt when it splashes, and Jiyong is laughing._
> 
> _The paint is oil-based, and sits thick under his nails, and it’s dripping all over the floor that Jiyong’s covered in big sheets of white paper when Jiyong pulls Seungri’s hands out. “We’re going to get creative,” Jiyong says, and he takes Seungri’s wrists in his cleaner hands. He drags Seungri down to his knees, and draws words using Seungri’s fingers like brushes._
> 
> _“This is crazy,” Seungri says. “Also, this shirt was expensive.” Jiyong chuckles, and rests his chin on Seungri’s shoulder, and it’s like he’s hugging Seungri from behind. His breath is warm on Seungri’s ear._
> 
> _“Relax, maknae,” Jiyong says, and there’s a giddiness in his voice that is intoxicating, and Seungri listens, letting the tension melt out of his arms. “That’s better.”_
> 
> _Seungri closes his eyes, and when he opens them, the words in front of him are written in a mix of his and Jiyong’s handwriting, and Seungri…._

 

Starts to breathe.

 

*

 

It’s a rainy March evening. Seungri is sitting on his sofa, watching the news, and debating going out tonight with Jonghyun, who has his eye on an exclusive club event in Gangnam. He’s halfway towards saying yes when his front door opens.

Seungri doesn’t have to turn to know who it is. Only two people have the key, and one of them is manager-noona, who is at home with her family for the next three days.

“Hi,” Seungri says, and he doesn’t look. He doesn’t hear much movement, just the shutting of the door, and Jiyong sliding the deadbolt home and relocking the two bottom locks.

Jiyong’s always been finicky about the locks. Seungri can remember the first night it had been just the two of them in this dorm, and Jiyong had checked the locks twice before bed.

Now Seungri does it just because he’d gotten used to the sound.

“Why are you here?” Seungri stands, and Jiyong is standing in the foyer, drenched and miserable and anxious. Seungri doesn’t mean to, but he walks closer, and closer still.

Jiyong, he thinks, is like a magnet, and Seungri is drawn to him, always.

“How’s the album coming?” Seungri asks, and he wonders if that’s why Jiyong is here. If Jiyong can’t write, and he needs Seungri even though Seungri’s got all these inconvenient demands and feelings. “Is that why you’ve come?” Seungri looks at the rainwater collecting on the floor. “You should’ve carried an umbrella.”

“Fuck umbrellas,” Jiyong says, and he sniffles, and Seungri debates getting a towel but Jiyong is pinning him in place with his eyes. “Listen to me.”

“I always do. It’s always the same thing.”

“You don’t understand,” Jiyong says, and his voice crackles. “I can’t lose you.”

“How would you write?” Seungri says, and he studies the way Jiyong is twisting the rings on his left hand in circles, switching between them as he talks.

“Not… because of that,” and Seungri looks up, and Jiyong is staring at him, and there’s that strange look in Jiyong’s eyes, the one Seungri’d refused to identify last time because he’s been so afraid to hope. “I’ve written without you before.” Jiyong licks his lips. “Seungri, you know how I am.”

“Yeah, I do.” Seungri doesn’t take his eyes off of Jiyong’s face.

“I didn’t want to fall in love with you,” Jiyong says, “because whenever I fall in love, it ends with a hit song and another broken heart. Another person who I might never see again.” Jiyong’s eyes stare into Seungri’s, and Seungri is afraid to breathe. “So it’s more that I didn’t want you to leave me. So I decided I wouldn’t fall in love with you. Wouldn’t do whatever it is that makes people leave.”

“Oh,” Seungri says, and Jiyong steps closer, taking Seungri’s face between his hands. He’s soaking wet, and it’s still chilly, and he’s shivering just a little. “Is it that easy to choose?” Jiyong’s thumbs caress his lower lip.

“I wake up in the morning and I tell myself not to love you. I eat breakfast, and tell myself not to love you. I go to the studio, or meet a friend for lunch, or call my sister, and I tell myself not to love you. I push you away, and I tell myself not to love you. I write the lyrics to love songs along your skin and I tell myself, as I write, that I can’t, absolutely can’t, fall in love with you.”

“You should have told _me_ not to love _you_ ,” Seungri whispers, and Jiyong’s hands drop to Seungri’s shoulders.

“I did,” Jiyong says. “It feels like I told you countless times.”

“My heart didn’t listen.”

“You’ve never been the best at following directions.”

“I always tried to follow yours.” Seungri exhales. “Come here,” Seungri says, and he opens his arms. It’s a risk, but one he needs to take. One he wants to take. “Just… stop thinking with your head and think with your heart.”

“Are you telling me to be reckless?” Jiyong laughs incredulously. “Lee Seunghyun, who knows our schedule months in advance, and won’t gamble, and refuses to wash his red clothes with the rest of his clothes; that guy… is telling me to take a step forward into the dark with no idea what might happen next?”

“Yeah,” Seungri says, and he’s incredulous too. “I am.”

“I thought I was supposed to be the crazy one,” Jiyong says.

“Prove it.”

“I’m moody. I’m mean. I’m angry.”

“I know,” Seungri says plainly. “Don’t forget selfish.”

Jiyong blinks, and his eyes are wide. “ _And_ I’m selfish.” A tiny smile. “And I bully you all the time.”

“I know.”

“Sometimes I hate everyone,” Jiyong says. “Sometimes I hate every person on this planet, and wish I could fall into my music and stay there, with the notes and the melodies and half-formed lyrics.” Jiyong’s skin is cool but he warms in Seungri’s arms. Seungri feels like he’s come home, the unsettled, empty feeling in his chest over the past couple of months fading away to nothing in the wake of Jiyong’s nails digging into his back and a tiny fluttering feeling that might just be hope.

“I know.”

Seungri knows Jiyong. Seungri knows that Jiyong can be a child just as easily as an adult, but they’re all a little screwed up, in their own ways.

“But I never hate you,” and now, his hands are sliding down Seungri’s arms, leaving goosebumps in their wake, and it is Seungri who shivers at the touch. “Because I’ve broken you down, and you stay. You always stay, and let me break you again, and now you’ve got little pieces of my music mixed in with all your pieces, and I can’t even separate the two anymore.”

“Yeah?” Seungri asks, and Jiyong presses a kiss to Seungri’s jaw. He smells sweet, like the spring rain.

“But you’ll get tired of me if I love you,” Jiyong continues. “You know how I love. I’ll finish breaking you, and you’ll leave, and there will be a song, and you won’t be there.”

There’s silence as Jiyong twines their fingers together. His rings are too thick, and they dig into the webbed skin between Seungri’s fingers. Seungri’s clothes are wet now too, and they stick to them both, and Jiyong doesn’t seem to notice. Seungri just doesn’t care.

“You finished breaking me a long time ago,” Seungri says, finally, and Jiyong pauses, seeming to not even breathe. “And I’m still here.”

“Why?”

“Because.” Seungri takes a deep breath. “I want it all. I accept the creepy texts and the obsessive clinging and… I want all of it, hyung. I’ve always wanted all of it, and I don’t think I’m demanding too much, because it’s what you’ve been trying to give me for years, and you just didn’t realize it.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Jiyong tells him, exhaling and pressing his forehead to Seungri’s shoulder. Seungri can feel Jiyong’s breath on his neck, and his heart is lurching. “Your brain has finally completely stopped working. You have no idea what you’re asking for, maknae-“

“But I do,” Seungri says. “After all, don’t I love to be the center of attention? Let me be the center of yours. The only center.” Seungri leans down and rests his forehead against Jiyong’s. “I know you’re fucked up already. You won’t scare me away.”

“No?” Jiyong asks.

“You’ve already done your worst. And I’m still here. You don’t have to chase me, Tom.” Seungri feels like laughing, or crying or maybe turning into a puddle even bigger than the one they’re standing in, made of the raindrops dripping from Jiyong’s soaking clothes.

“Good,” Jiyong says, and Seungri can feel Jiyong’s breath on his lips. “I’ve chased enough muses.”

 

*

 

_“What we should be afraid of are not the failures, but the heart that is no longer brave enough to take risks and embrace challenges.”_ – G-Dragon

 

*

 

Jiyong isn’t perfect, but neither is Seungri. Jiyong scribbles lyrics with his lips along Seungri’s skin, and Seungri tugs Jiyong up to his mouth for kisses, and Jiyong writes love songs that make Seungri smile every time he listens, because Jiyong has tumbled, head first, into love with Seungri, and Seungri’s not going anywhere.

> _“I like you best,” Jiyong whispers, and Seungri smiles and bites his lower lip, blinking up at Jiyong. Jiyong’s eyes fall to Seungri’s bracelet, and Seungri smiles wider and holds it up for inspection._
> 
> _“I like me best too,” Seungri says cheekily, and Jiyong grins and tickles at his sides, and Seungri laughs, because he’s so fucking happy._
> 
> _“You’re like a sapling,” Jiyong says, and Seungri tilts his head in inquiry. “A baby tree just waiting to grow up.”_
> 
> _“A sapling?” Seungri asks, and Seungri, seventeen and full of dreams and ambitions and hope, has always thought of himself as that lonely fragile branch, so it’s hard to wrap his head around it._
> 
> _“You’re going to be so strong,” Jiyong says. “The strongest tree of us all.”_

And everything starts over again here.

 

 

** END **  


**Author's Note:**

> mixed timelines, sexual themes. When tour dates are announced, mine will probably be proven completely wrong.


End file.
